Meeting of the Eastern Great Lakes Section of the American Physical Society

Head of the Office of Education and Public Engagement for Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

Rebecca Thompson is the Head of Education and Public Engagement at the Fermi National Accelerator Lab. After receiving her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Austin, she joined the staff of American Physical Society where she led their public engagement efforts for 11 years. While there she authored the popular Spectra, The Laser Superhero series of physics comic books. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the Sigma Xi honors society. Her first book, Fire, Ice, and Physics; The Science of Game of Thrones, was released in October 2019.

Lead Data Scientist at Quantitative Scientific Solutions

Dr. Dave Rench McCauley (QS-2) is a Lead Data Scientist, running projects and teams related to bibliometrics, network science, and graph machine learning. Previously he was a data scientist and solutions architect at a GPU-accelerated database and analytics startup called Kinetica and, prior to that, a technical adviser and development team lead contractor at the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office. Throughout his career, Dave has led or contributed to projects across a diverse array of technologies and disciplines, including semiconductor spintronics, solar panel reliability engineering, renewable energy workforce development, the behavioral science of energy technology adoption, and open source/open science projects in machine learning and FAIR data access. This has led him to managing more than $60 million worth of research projects and pioneering the use of new technologies across the federal government, non-profit, and academic sectors.

Assistant Editorial Director and Department Toolkit Consultant for the Effective Practices for Physics Programs by the American Physical Society

Courtney Lannert recently retired as a Professor of physics after 9 years in a position based at Smith College and shared with UMass Amherst through the Five-College Consortium and a previous 10 years on the faculty at Wellesley College. She received her Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Barbara in June 2002 and her B.S. in physics from Brown University in 1996.

Professor Lannert’s research is in the field of theoretical condensed matter physics, using numerical and analytical tools to model novel quantum phases and phase transitions. Her work spans systems from superconductors and frustrated magnets to ultracold atomic gasses where much of her recent work has explored novel geometries in Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs).

A KITP scholar from 2004-2006, Courtney is also a founding board member of the Anacapa Society for theoretical physicists at primarily undergraduate institutions. She served on the APS LeRoy Apker Award Selection Committee (2008-2010) and is currently a member of the Committee on Education (2015-2017).

Marciano Bagnoli works at Georgia-Pacific managing continuous improvement and NIR spectral projects. He previously localized production lines from Japan to the US with Shin-Etsu Silicones and advised German start-ups on accessing projects across the EU. He currently serves on the US Technical Advisory Group to ISO, informing the US’ position on international quality standards. He is a columnist and invited speaker at the American Chemical Society’s National Meeting and the American Physical Society’s Industry webinar series.

Kiran is currently a therapeutic medical physics resident at UNC Chapel Hill. She obtained her BS in physics from Washington College, and her MS in medical physics from Duke University. Medical physics is the perfect mix of her two greatest interests: physics and medicine. She loves being involved in the radiation oncology clinic and helping advance cancer treatments for patients. Her research is focused on investigating the use of 3D polymer gel dosimetry for practical clinical purposes. 

In her spare time she enjoys playing tennis, going for a run, baking, and reading. She recently adopted a rescue beagle and, not to be biased, she is the cutest dog in the world.

Carol Burns teaches physics and physical science at Saint Ursula Academy in Cincinnati, OH. Her childhood dream was to work for the National Park Service. After earning a bachelor’s degree from Appalachian State University, Carol found herself teaching high school biology. She discovered that she enjoys being in a classroom. The opportunity to build relationships with students and watch their understanding of course content deepen is rewarding. Recognizing that outdoor education with the park service would not allow her to watch her students’ understanding develop over time, she settled into a teaching career. Carol has experience teaching biology, chemistry, and physics. She was surprised to find that physics is by far her favorite course to teach. In 2018 she had the opportunity to become a full time student at Xavier University. Carol took two years of upper level physics courses while completing her Master’s in Education at Xavier. She loved being a student and now keeps her eyes and ears open for additional learning opportunities. Since completing her MEd in 2020, she has taken STEMcoding courses, audited a differential equations course, and participated in a quantum computing workshop for teachers. If she is not in her classroom, Carol can be found exploring the parks of Greater Cincinnati with her five children.