Faculty Promotions in Recent Years

Faculty who were promoted in recent years are as follows.

Faculty Promotions, 2006

There was one faculty promotion to the rank of Professor in 2006. Two who were recently appointed as Associate Professors were awarded tenure.
Hendrik Schatz came to MSU in 1999 as an Assistant Professor at the NSCL and the Physics-Astronomy Department. In 2004 he was promoted to the Associate Professor rank with tenure and this year was promoted to Professor. Hendrik Schatz is one of the leaders in the field of nuclear astrophysics. He is one of the founders of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics, an NSF Physics Frontier Center. While at MSU he made the first measurement of the half-life of ⁷⁸Ni, which was critical for r-process models of nuclearsynthesis. He developed a new technique to measure accurately resonance energies for nuclei critical to the rp-process and used it to reduce the uncertainty in a key rate by a factor of 10,000. He delineated the path and endpoint of the rp-process and discovered a new photodisintegration process that powers X-ray superbursts. Professor Schatz built and successfully used the NERO neutron detector and wa sthe Principal Investigator on a successful NSF MRI grant to build a rare-isotope FR filter for the NSCL facility. In 2002 Professor Schatz won a Teacher-Scolar Award from the College of Natural Science and in 2005 the graduate students in the department voted him the best teacher.

Professors Megan Donahue and Mark Voit came to MSU in 2003 at the rank of Associate Professor and were granted tenure this year. The Donahue-Voit research team of astronomers is made up of this married couple of whom Donahue is the observational astronomer and Voit is the theorist. His work is on the properties of large galaxy clusters and the evolution of the universe while her work deals with the use of distant galaxy clusters to measure fundamental properties of the universe. Part of their work presented evidence that led to the current understanding that the total mass content of the universe is not enough to halt its expansion which then led to the discovery that most of the universe consists of "Dark Energy"

Faculty Promotions, 2005

While there were no faculty promotions between ranks in 2005, two recently appointed faculty members were reappointed in rank for second terms. Each has completed three years at Michigan State University. They are Carlo Piermarocchi and Kirsten Tollefson, who have been Assistant Professors at MSU since 2002.
Professor Piermarocchi is a theorist whose research activities include: Optical quantum control for quantum computation in semiconductor systems; the study of optically controlled spin-spin interaction in semiconductors; and a theory of nonlinear optical properties in semiconductor quantum wells, wires, dots, and optical microcavities.
Professor Tollefson's research is involved with the measurment of fundamental properties of the top quark using Run II data from CDF experiment at Fermilab. She is the head of the Trigger and Dataset Working Group on CDF.

Faculty Promotions, 2004

Scott Pratt was promoted with tenure to the rank of Associate Professor. He came to MSU as an Assistant Professor in 1995. His research while at MSU has been concerned with heavy-ion-collision phenomenology, correlations, statistical mechanics and hadronic phase transitions. Professor Pratt received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Nuclear Physics in 1985 from University of Minnesota. Prior to coming to MSU, Professor Pratt was a Research Associate at Texas A & M, University of Tennessee and Oregon State University. He was also affilated in a research capacity at the University of Lund in Sweden and at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. From January 1989 to September 1992 Dr. Pratt was a lecturer and assistant scientist at the University of Wisconsin. He was a visiting Assistant Professor at MSU during the period from September, 1992 through August, 1994. From August 1994 until February 1995, Dr Scott was a research Assistant Professor at Wayne State University before returning to MSU.

Stuart Tessmer was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure. He came to MSU as an Assistant Professor in 1998. His research since he has been at MSU has been concerned with quantum interference and confinement, correlated electron systems, semiconductor defects and interfaces, thermoelectricity and superconductivity. Professor Tessmer received his Ph.D. in Physics in 1995 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1995-1998 before coming to MSU.

Chien-Peng Yuan came to MSU as an Assistant Professor in 1992. He was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure in 1998 and to the rank of Professor this year. His research has been to work on the frontiers of QCD research. Professor Yuan received his Ph.D. in 1988 from University of Michigan. He was a research associate at Argonne National Laboratory (1988-1990); The Johns Hopkins University (1990-1992); and University of California at Santa Cruz in the Spring and Summer of 1991.

Stephen Zepf has been promoted to the rank of Professor with tenure. He came to MSU in 2001 as an Associate Professor. His research while at MSU has been.. Professor Zepf received his Ph.D. in Astronomy in 1992 from Johns Hopkins University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at University of Durham (1991-1993), A Hubble Fellow & Assistant Research Scientist at University of California, Berkeley (1993-1997), Assistant Professor at Yale (1997-2001) and, while at Yale, Director of Graduate Studies (1999-2001).

Faculty Promotions, 2003

Simon J. L. Billinge came to MSU as an Assistant Professor in 1994. He was promoted with tenure to the rank of Associate Professor in 1999. His research while at MSU has been concerned with developing novel techniques for studying local structure of semiconductor alloys using x-ray and neutron scattering, primarily using synchrotron sources. These interests also include studying local structure-property relationships in electronic transition metal oxides and local structure of novel materials. Professor Billinge received his Ph.D. in May, 1992 from the University of Pennsylvania.

Thomas Glasmacher received his Ph.D. in December, 1992 from Florida State University. He has been at MSU since 1995 when he came here as an Assistant Professor. In 1999 he was promoted to Associate Professor. His research at MSU is at the NSCL where his interests include nuclear structure studies of rare isotopes, intermediate-energy Coulomb excitation, proton scattering in inverse kinematics and photon detection. Since the end of May he has been the Associate Director for Operations at the NSCL.

Daniel R. Stump, came to MSU as an Assistant Professor in 1980 after postdoctoral work at Indiana University. He received his PhD from MIT in 1976. In 1985 he was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. His research interests have included: lattice gauge theory; computer simulations in statistical physics; electroweak processes; anomalous couplings and polarized pp collisions; calculations on the light gravitino scenario; classical dynamics of magnetic dipoles; and parton distribution functions including uncertainties. He is currently the Department's Associate Chair for Undergraduate Affairs.