Curricula Vitae in Physics & Astronomy

Name	Personal Focus	Summary
Professor Brett Altschul Associate Professor	high-energy physics, theoretical physics, exotic physics beyond the standard model	My research focuses on the possibility of exotic physics beyond the standard model of particle physics. In the most exotic scenarios, we consider relaxing some of the basic requirements that are ordinarily placed on physical theories. For example, there might be tiny deviations from Einstein's theory of relativity. It is interesting to look for such deviations, and even if they are not found, it is useful to know just howwell the theory's predictions have been confirmed.
Professor Yaroslaw Bazaliy Associate Professor	condensed matter theory, magnetism, spintronics	Research in theoretical condensed matter physics in the area of magnetism, spin-polarized currents, magnetization dynamics and spin transport.
Alice Churukian Senior Instructor		Alice Churukian is a Senior Instructor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, College of Arts and Sciences.
John Cook Senior Instructor		John Cook is an Instructor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, College of Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Thomas McLendon Crawford Professor	Nanomagnetism, Nanoelectronics	To inspire a diverse team of students and faculty to make new discoveries and drive fundamental innovation in single spin nanotechnology.
Dr. Richard John Creswick Professor	Theory of condensed matter, critical phenomena , computational physics	My research covers a wide range of topics in theoretical condensed matter physics including spontaneous symmetry breaking and critical phenomena, renormalization group theory, and computational methods in quantum physics. In addition, I work closely with the experimental condensed matter group on ferroelectric materials and high-TC superconductivity. I am also part of a large international collaboration searching for axions coming from the core of the sun.
Professor Scott Russell Crittenden Associate Professor	Microbial Fuel Cells, Atomic Force Microscopy, Electrogenic Bacteria	Scott Crittenden's group works on bacteria that generate electricity as a natural byproduct of metabolism with the purely biological nanowires they produce and on the development of new techniques for scanning probe microscopy to explore material properties at the atomic scale
Dr. Timir Datta Professor	Macroscopic Quantum effects & gravitation	Experimental and mathematical topics in the areas of condensed matter physics are of interest to our group. Current research projects involve high temperature superconductivity, mesoscopic quantum transport, deterministic chaos, and the effects of disorder in linear and non-linear systems.
Dr. Albert K Dearden Instructor		Albert Dearden Is an Instructor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, College of Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Ralf W. Gothe Professor	Nuclear Physics, Structure of Hadrons, Non-perturbative Quantum-Chromodynamics	Researching has included pushing the idea of an electron microscope to higher and higher energies allows us to investigate nucleons and their excitations with higher and higher resolution via electron scattering experiments carried out at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF) in Virginia.
Dr. Vladimir Gudkov Professor	Theoretical Nuclear Physics	I am working on theoretical problems related to the experimental program in fundamental neutron physics at the SNS (Spallation Neutron Source). This includes the study of neutron properties, neutron beta-decay, parity violation effects and time reversal violation effects. The main purpose of this research is to work on theoretical problems related to experiments which have got the high priority at the SNS.
Dr. Yordanka Ilieva Professor	Experimental Nuclear Physics	Yordanka Ilieva received her doctoral degree in nuclear physics from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 2001. Her current research focuses on studying nuclear dynamics at intermediate energies.
Rongying Jin Professor		Rongying Jin is a Professor and SmartState Chair for Experimental Nanoscale Physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, College of Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Varsha P. Kulkarni Professor	Astrophysics	Extragalactic Optical, Infrared, and Ultraviolet Astronomy, Galaxy Evolution, Quasar Systems, Intergalactic Medium, Cosmology, Interstellar Medium, Cosmic Chemical EvolutionActive Galaxies
Dr. Milind Kunchur Professor	the intersection of psychophysics, human hearing, and high-end audio	Our group investigates phenomena in superconducting nanowires and thin films, as well as other condensed-matter systems, at ultra-short time scales and under extreme conditions of current density, electric field and dissipation levels. My other interest lies at the intersection of psychophysics, human hearing, and high-end audio.
Dr. Pawel O Mazur Professor	theoretical physics	My main interests are in Quantum Field Theory and Foundations of Quantum Theory as applied to gravitational phenomena and cosmology.
Dr. Sanjib R. Mishra Research Professor	Particle Physics	The very fundamental particles found in nature are leptons (electrons and their charged cousins, and neutrinos) and quarks. The Standard Model (SM) describes how these interact via the strong and electroweak forces. Our group studies neutrinos which have puzzling behavior unexplained by the Standard Model; we also study the nature of the SM forces, with emphasis on searches for new phenomena that may lie beyond.
Alexander Monin Assistant Professor		Alexander Monin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, College of Arts and Sciences.
Sai Mu Assistant Professor	magnetic quantum materials for applications in spintronics and quantum computing, electron and phonon transport in disordered materials, novel semiconductors (wide bandgap materials) for electronics	Sai Mu uses quantum-mechanical first-principles methods to explore the electronic structure, transport processes, magnetic properties, and the couplings between different degrees of freedom in a variety of condensed materials, from correlated transition metal oxides and alloys to new semiconductors. Research topics include magnetic quantum materials for applications in spintronics and quantum computing, electron and phonon transport in disordered materials, novel semiconductors for electronics.
Dr. Yuriy Pershyn Professor	spintronics, memory effects in solids, bionanotechnology	My field of research is computational/theoretical nanophysics. Current research concerns investigation of charge and spin transport in molecules, semiconductor structures and other submicron electronic devices.
Alexey Petrov Department Chair/Professor	applications of effective field theories to analyses of electroweak interactions and QCD, studies of CP-violation, heavy flavor physics	Alexey A. Petrov is a USC Endowed Chair in Physics and the Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of South Carolina. He has been on the faculty since 2022, joining from Wayne State University, where he was a professor since 2001 after postdoctoral fellowships at Cornell University and Johns Hopkins University. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1997.
Dr. Roberto Petti Professor	Particle Physics, Renewable Energies, Nuclear Physics	Matthias Schindler is Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of South Carolina. His areas of specialization are symmetries and symmetry violation, low-energy hadronic physics, few-nucleon systems, nucleon properties, and chiral perturbation theory.
Carl Rosenfeld Professor	e+ e- annihilation at high energy, instrumentation for particle physics experiments	Currently I am participating in the MINOS, MIPP, NOvA, and Cuoricino collaborations.
Matthias R. Schindler Professor	Symmetries and symmetry violation, low-energy hadronic physics, few-nucleon systems	Professor Schindler is working on problems in hadronic physics related to the strong and weak interactions. He has worked on theoretical methods to describe the properties of single protons and neutrons as well as the interaction between two and more nucleons. His current research focuses on fundamental symmetries in two- and few-nucleon systems. This work is related to ongoing experimental efforts at neutron facilities such as the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Dr. Steffen Strauch Professor	experimental medium-energy nuclear physics	Research interests include: Baryon spectroscopy,Nucleon electromagnetic form factors,Medium modifications of hadronic properties, Few-body physics,Polarization experiments,and Fundamental symmetries
Dr. David John Tedeschi Professor	Medical Physics, Nuclear Physics	My current research is focused on understanding the dynamical structure of the proton. In the naive quark model, the proton consists of 3 quarks (uud). However, the proton is not a static object, but a continually changing one. Depending on how one probes the proton, strange quark-antiquark pairs and gluons can contribute to its observed properties.
Professor Yanwen Wu, PhD Associate Professor	Quantum Coherence, Ultrafast spectroscopy, Plasmonics	My areas of research focus on the fabrication and optical study of nanostructures of different materials including semiconductors, metal, and dichalcogenides for applications in the fields of plasmonics and quantum information processing. In particular, the studies of classical and quantum coherent coupling across different material platform are of vast interest in the realization of novel optoelectronic devices, highly sensitive nano-sensors, and broadband detectors.