Sinéad grew up in Aberdeen, Scotland. She graduated from the University of St. Andrews with a first class honours MPhys in experimental physics in 2018. As an undergraduate, she worked on projects in the fields of synthetic optics, cold atoms and Kerr lens modelocked laser design. In 2017, she completed a semester exchange at the College of William & Mary where she worked on a project to design an ECDL laser.
Drew grew up in the Pacific Northwestern corner of Washington State. He graduated from Brown University in 2013 with a degree in chemical physics, and joined the CU Boulder physics Ph.D. program in the summer of 2016. In the interim three years, he worked as a research assistant at the Max-Born-Institut in Berlin, Germany and at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India, and traveled extensively. Drew’s previous research topics have included plasmonic interferometry, ultrafast terahertz spectroscopy, electron bubbles in liquid helium and other topics.
Brendan grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina and studied mathematics and German as an undergraduate at UNC Chapel Hill. After spending a year as an exchange student at the University of Ulm in southern Germany, he became interested in renewable energy integration into electric power systems. He subsequently worked for two years at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, specializing in simulating the operational effects of connecting large-scale wind and solar generators to South Asian electricity grids.
Joshua spent his childhood living and working on a family farm in rural Illinois. In the fall of 2010, he enrolled at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana; in addition to classes, he worked as an undergraduate teaching assistant for the beginning physics courses, and he designed and constructed a project which utilized seismic diffraction to monitor fluid invasion in fracture apertures in the Applied Experimental GeoPhyiscs Research group. In the spring of 2014, he graduated from Purdue University summa cum laude with a B.S.
Anya grew up in Maryland, and graduated from the University of Maryland with High Honors in Physics in 2020. As an undergraduate, she conducted research on the optical properties of noble-metal nanostructures, and also contributed to projects in plasma physics. Anya began her PhD studies in Physics at CU Boulder as an NSF graduate research fellow and joined the KM group in 2020. She was also awarded a Fulbright fellowship to conduct optics research at KU Leuven in Belgium, though she was not able to participate due to the pandemic.
Christian attended the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ where he received a B.S. in Physics and Mathematics with magna cum laude honors. During his undergraduate years, he worked with Weigang Wang on nanosphere lithography for use in studying magnetic materials. He also spent some time working on graphene as well as soft-condensed matter simulations. He began his PhD program at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2014 and joined the KM group the summer before his first year. In his free time, Christian enjoys rock climbing, hiking, and playing with his dog.
Yuka is from Kyoto, Japan. She received her B.A. in Physics from Reed College in Portland, Oregon in 2017. Her undergraduate thesis focused on the characterization and generation of non-diffracting beams. She started her Ph.D. program at the University of Colorado Boulder and joined the Kapteyn-Murnane group in fall of 2017, where she is currently working in the imaging team. When not in the lab Yuka enjoys hiking, watching plays, and visiting art museums.
Honors & Awards:
Dan grew up north of Atlanta, Georgia and graduated from the University of Georgia in 2017 with a B.S. in Physics and a B.S. in Chemistry. As an undergraduate he worked on the fabrication of composite plasmonic nanostructures, studying the effect of nano-scale structure on macro-scale optical properties. However, after a summer working with ultrafast lasers under Dr. Stephen Leone in 2016, he was hooked on pursuing ultrafast science as a career -- eventually joining the KM Group in the spring of 2018 as a member of the soft x-ray team.
Iona grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. She received her bachelor's degree in Physics at Williams College, where she conducted research in ultrafast electron diffraction. She joined the KM group in the summer of 2019, and has worked on many projects with the magnetics and imaging teams. She now studies topological spin textures such as skyrmions, using extreme ultraviolet and soft x-ray light to create 3D maps of their nanoscale spin texture and measure their ultrafast dynamics.
Physics Frontiers Centers (PFCs)
The Physics Frontiers Centers (PFC) program supports university-based centers and institutes where the collective efforts of a larger group of individuals can enable transformational advances in the most promising research areas. The program is designed to foster major breakthroughs at the intellectual frontiers of physics by providing needed resources such as combinations of talents, skills, disciplines, and/or specialized infrastructure, not usually available to individual investigators or small groups, in an environment in which the collective efforts of the larger group can be shown to be seminal to promoting significant progress in the science and the education of students. PFCs also include creative, substantive activities aimed at enhancing education, broadening participation of traditionally underrepresented groups, and outreach to the scientific community and general public. Read more about this program at the NSF website.