Dr. Parviz Ghavamian received his Ph.D. in Astrophysics from Rice University, Houston, TX in 2000.  He is an observational and theoretical astrophysicist whose interest lies in how the gas and dust in and around galaxies is heated and chemically enriched via shock waves in supernova remnants (SNRs). Dr. Ghavamian is also interested in how shock waves control the evolution of high velocity clouds (HVCs). For the past 10 years Dr. Ghavamian has led an effort to observationally determine the dependence of electron-proton and ion-ion temperature equilibration on shock speed, and to then use this relationship to identify the types of plasma processes operating in astrophysical shocks. For the past 6 years Dr. Ghavamian has been closely involved in a fruitful observational collaboration to study the life cycle of dust in the ISM, from its creation in the heart of supernova explosions, to its destruction in supernova blast waves.

Dr. Ghavamian has taught undergraduates at Rice University and Goucher College. He appreciates that students have a wide variety of interests, conceptions, experiences and skills with regards to science and math and uses the lecture-tutorial style of instruction in his courses.

Dr. Joel Moore received his Ph.D. in Geosciences from Pennsylvania State University in 2008. Upon completing his dissertation, Dr. Moore worked in a postdoctoral position in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences at Northwestern University.

Dr. Moore’s research uses geochemical tools, including radiogenic and non-traditional stable isotopes, to understand how the processes of mineral weathering and soil development, uplift and erosion, and ecosystem development interact to shape the earth’s surface and the global carbon cycle. In past research Dr. Moore investigated the chemical and physical hydrology of the Southern Alps of New Zealand and also soil chemistry from the same region. He has studied anthropogenic pollution, particularly heavy metal pollution, of marine sediments in Long Island Sound and the New York Bight. Current research topics include the use of novel instrumentation to investigate sources of CO2 to the urban atmosphere as well as potential impacts of CO2 sequestration on mineral dissolution and water quality.

Designing and teaching his own classes has further increased his enthusiasm for teaching. Dr. Moore believes mentoring and collaborative research with students are key components of the educational experience and has served as primary mentor for several undergraduate researchers as well as mentoring and training graduate students.

Dr. Asli Sezen received her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from The Pennsylvania State University, University Park in 2011. During her Ph.D., Dr Sezen worked with middle school science teachers to develop practical classroom assessment practices through video case reflections. Besides working on her Dissertation study, she was part of a research group that developed socio-cultural analytical frameworks for analyzing pre-service science teachers’ reflections on their initial teaching practices. Dr. Sezen also involved in a research project aimed to review and analyze the foundations and current studies of learning progressions and the article from this project was published in the Journal of Studies in Science Education in 2011.

Before starting her Ph.D., Dr. Sezen coordinated “Botanic Garden Education Project (BOGEP)” supported by American Christensen Foundation and ANG Foundation (Turkey). During this project, she worked with a group of teachers to establish and write a curriculum for the first education department located in a scientific botanic garden in Istanbul, Turkey.  Inspired by the international innovative curriculum movements in middle school science, Dr. Sezen worked on science curriculum analysis and the factors influencing the curricular changes. This was her focus for her MA degree at Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey. Her thesis was presented at the Comparative and International Education Society’s 2008 annual conference at the Columbia University and a book from this study is now in press at a German Academic Publishing House in 2010.  

Dr. Asli Sezen gained substantial teaching experiences both at K-12 and college level in varied environments. In Turkey, she taught science and maths to students in an international middle school. In the U.S., she continued to work with middle school students in their science projects. In 2009, she was offered a job at the Science-U (summer camps at Penn State) as a curriculum mentor. She also taught a science methods course at Penn State and secondary school science and math teaching methods, research methods, planning and evaluation in education, and comparative education courses at Yeditepe and Bogazici Universities in Istanbul, Turkey.

Dr. Jia-An Yan received his Ph.D. in Condensed Matter Physics in 2005 from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China where he also received the Second-Class Excellent Thesis Award. He began his Ph.D. training in the field of computational condensed matter physics. His doctoral work focused on the electronic structure of dislocations and impurity-dislocation interactions in iron and iron alloys using real-space first-principles methods. Dr. Yan’s postdoctoral fellowship at the Georgia Institute of Technology focused on the study of two important low-dimensional systems: silicon nanowires and graphene.  His second postdoctoral fellowship at the Vanderbilt University focused on developing new techniques to study the interactions between electron beam and solids in the time domain.

Dr. Yan’s research concentrates on the electronic structure and lattice dynamics of materials at low dimensions. Current projects include the electric field effects on the phonon properties and electron-phonon coupling in graphene-based materials.

Dr. Yan comes from Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia where he was a temporary assistant professor in the Department of Physics and supervised two undergraduate students to do research in the area of graphene and electron microscopy imaging.