Alumni Reunion 2012 - Physics Department

Speaker Biographies

Home  |  Program  |  Speaker Bios  |  Participants  |  Directions  |  Contact     

 


Denny Hamill has been serving as Chairman of the Board of Microelectronics & Computer Technology Corporation (MCC). Denny retired from the 3M Company in 2000, having worked for the company since 1971. He is serving on boards and advisory boards of several other companies. His consulting activities are presently focused on market and business planning in pre-IPO start-ups and in the area of technology transfer and commercialization.

Mike Naughton joined the Boston College physics department in 1998 and became the Chairman in 2006. He is an expert in such fields as nanotechnology and superconductivity, and was co-founder and chief technology officer of Solasta, Inc., a venture-funded company established to commercialize new advances in nanostructured solar cells. The winner of a Boston College Distinguished Research Award in 2005, Naughton was selected as a American Physical Society Fellow in 2003 and a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award winner in 1992. He currently holds or co-holds 18 patents, with 10 more pending. Naughton served as interim academic vice president for research from 2005-06, and has been a judge for the Boston College Venture Competition the past five years. He received his doctorate in physics from Boston University in 1986 and a bachelor’s degree in physics from St. John Fisher College in 1979.

Kristen Stoops has more than 14 years business development experience in life sciences technology companies. She was an early US employee at Spotfire, Inc. where she was instrumental in establishing Spotfire software as the de facto standard for data visualization in pharmaceutical and biotechnology R&D. During her seven-year tenure with Spotfire, she implemented and directed the company’s industry leading life sciences partner program. From 2006 to 2008, Kristen was Director of Informatics Business Development at Helicos BioSciences Corp. and developed the company’s commercial informatics program for its DNA sequencing platform. Following Helicos, Kristen went to Merck & Co., Inc. There, she helped position its Rosetta Biosoftware business unit for acquisition in her role as Sr. Director of Strategic Marketing and New Business Development. Rosetta Biosoftware was acquired by Microsoft in June, 2009. Later in 2009, Kristen co-founded Neotron Inc., a developer of nuclear detection technologies with applications in national security and healthcare. Kristen is currently Business Development Director at Oxford Nanopore Technologies, Ltd., a British company developing nanopore-based molecular sensing systems. She holds a Master of Arts degree in Physics from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Physics from the University of Utah.

László Barabási is a Distinguished University Professor at Northeastern University, where he directs the Center for Complex Network Research, and holds appointments in the Departments of Physics, Computer Science and Biology, as well as in the Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women Hospital, and is a member of the Center for Cancer Systems Biology at Dana Farber Cancer Institute. He received his Masters in Theoretical Physics at the Eötvös University in Budapest, Hungary and was awarded a Ph.D. three years later at Boston University. After a year at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, he joined Notre Dame as an Assistant Professor, and in 2001 was promoted to the Professor and the Emil T. Hofman Chair. Barabási recently released on April 29th his newest book "Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do" (Dutton, 2010) available in five languages. He has also authored "Linked: The New Science of Networks" (Perseus, 2002), currently available in eleven languages, is co-author of "Fractal Concepts in Surface Growth" (Cambridge, 1995), and the co-editor of "The Structure and Dynamics of Networks" (Princeton, 2005). His work lead to the discovery of scale-free networks in 1999, and proposed the Barabasi-Albert model to explain their widespread emergence in natural, technological and social systems, from the cellular telephone to the WWW or online communities. His work on complex networks have been widely featured in the media, including the cover of Nature, Science News and many other journals, and written about in Science, Science News, New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, American Scientist, Discover, Business Week, Die Zeit, El Pais, Le Monde, London’s Daily Telegraph, National Geographic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, New Scientist, and La Republica, among others. He has been interviewed by BBC Radio, National Public Radio, CBS and ABC News, CNN, NBC, and many other media outlets.

Denise Ciotti Labieniec is the Director of Studies at The Winsor School, and all girls’ 5-12 school for academically motivated young women in Boston. She has been teaching physics and astronomy there for 17 years, and also chaired the Science Department prior to her current role. Denise graduated from MIT with a BS in physics and did her graduate work at Boston University, also in physics. She discovered her love of teaching when she was a TA for PY105 in the first year of her graduate work and has been doing it ever since.

Reza Sadr earned his Ph.D. from Boston University in 1998, following a M.S. in Physics at Northeastern University in 1992. He was recently awarded with a JD from Suffolk Law School in May 2011 and is currently an Associate of Electrical & Computer Technology Group at Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP. Prior to joining Finnegan, Dr. Sadr worked for two years as a technology specialist in the intellectual property department of a large general practice law firm in the Boston area. In that position he drafted and prosecuted patent applications in a variety of subjects related to electrical, mechanical, and computer technologies, including medical information software, information encoding, document analysis software, web-based interactions, user identification and authentication, web-based ordering, databases, audio-video data storage, scheduling systems, fault tolerant busses, fault tolerant nodes, opto-electronic devices, interferometric tools, optical storage, computer hardware, electronics, semi-conductors, lasers, audio devices, processing silicon wafers, thin film transistors, fuel cells, nano-technology, optical Fourier transforms, Fourier imaging, operating room control devices, remote gaming systems, and Bayesian networks. As a Ph.D. student and research assistant at Boston University: conducted research on the physical phenomenon of phases and phase transitions, specifically the anomalies of liquid water and melting of size-dispersed solids, using physical analysis and computer simulation, modeling and graphics; researched and published papers in prestigious peer reviewed physics journals on a range of other topics, including neural networks, roughening in surface growth and sputtering, and genetic code; and attended numerous national and international conferences to present his research findings.

Bogdan Dobrescu obtained his Ph.D. from BU in 1997. He had two postdoctoral appointments after the completion of his Ph.D. and is currently works as a Scientist II position in the Theoretical Physics Department at Fermilab (equivalent to a full professor position at a university). His research focuses on anticipating new elementary particles and interactions.

Terry Russell is an entrepreneur and investor in science and technology based startup companies. Most recently he was the Chief Executive Officer of Makoto Life Sciences, Inc., a life sciences company that provided drug discovery services in the field of cancer research to large, pharmaceutical companies. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Boston University.

Dr. Vito Scarola (CAS '99) received his Ph.D. in physics from Penn State in 2002. He is currently an assistant professor of physics at Virginia Tech. In 2011, Vito was awarded a Young Faculty Award by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).   The prestigious honor identifies and engages rising research stars in junior faculty positions and expose them to Department of Defense needs as well as DARPA's program development process.  Scarola’s research in theoretical physics explores the fundamental properties of quantum materials, including superconductors and quantum magnets.  

Justin Pniower
earned his bachelor's degree in physics and philosophy at BU in 1999. He completed his doctorate in philosophy of physics at Oxford University in 2005, where his research focused on philosophical implications and foundations of quantum theory.  In 2006, he joined Ab Initio Software where he works with large corporations to build data intensive applications to solve challenging problems.

Christopher Serino earned his Ph.D. from Boston University in January 2012 where he worked on problems in classical nonequilibrium statistical mechanics with his adviser Bill Klein. Prior to coming to BU, Christopher earned his B.S. in physics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and spent his senior year as the David and Kathleen Scott Scholar at Trinity College of Oxford University. After leaving BU, Christopher joined MIT Lincoln Laboratory as a member of the technical staff where he works on problems concerning national defense, in particular, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems and architectures. Christopher lives in Watertown, MA with his wife, Timna, and their dog, Skye.