Current Group Members
Dr. Lucas Paulien: Dr. Paulien joind Prof. Berg's group in 2022 as a postdoctoral associate. His expertise is computational electromagnetic scattering. Most recently, he conducted an extensive study of polarization-resolved lidar signals for the characterization of soot fractal aggregates including multiple-scattering effects. His work at KSU is to develop efficient and sophisticated modes for thermal radiation transport through novel insulation materials for aerospace applications. Dr. Paulien recieved his B.Sc. and M.Sc. from the University of Claude-Bernard and his Ph.D. from the Université of Paris-Saclay.
Shamna Trivedi: Mrs. Trivedi recieved her B.S. from Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University, 2020 and joined Prof. Berg's group in 2022. Her research focuses on digital holography and light scattering.
Past Group Members
Dr. Claudia Morello: Dr. Morello was a graduate student in Prof. Berg's group from 2018-2024. She graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University with a major in astrophysics and worked in Berg's group over the summer of 2017 as part of her participation in the Department's NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. Her REU work focused on computational simulations of light scattering patterns from holographic images of aerosol particles. Her doctoral work studied the light scattering behavior and remote sensing of cryovolcano particles from the moon Enceladus. She received her Ph.D. in 2024.
Dr.Ramesh Giri: Dr. Giri was a graduate student in Prof. Berg's group from 2017 to 2022. His research focused on the applications of digital holography and light scattering, in particular, an experiment to simultaneously measure scattering patterns and holographic images of single aerosol particle in situ and in color. He received his B.S. from Tribhuvan University in Nepal in 2011, an M.S. from that university in 2015, and a Ph.D. from KSU in 2022.
Dr. Peyman Feizollah: Dr. Feizollah was a postdoctoral research associate at KSU (2021-2022) and graduate student (2018-2021) in Prof. Berg's group. His research focused on experimental studies of electron dynamics in thin metal films with ultra-fast optical methods. He has also contributed to research in digital holography and advanced optical methods to image rough surfaces. He received a B.Ss. in Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics from the University of Isfahan in (2008), M.Sc. from the University of Tehran in (2012), M.Sc. from Kansas State University in (2018), and Ph.D. Kansas State University in (2021). Dr. Feizollah later joined Coherent Inc.
Peter Anderson: Mr. Anderson was a graduate student working in Prof. Berg's group at KSU. His research focused on the application of digital holography to measure the optical observables of microscopic particles, which include the absorption, scattering, and extinction cross sections. He has also contributed to the group's efforts to develop techniques to image rough surfaces with holography. Mr. Anderson received a B.S. in Physics (Cum Laude) from Mississippi State University in 2013. He received an M.Sc. from KSU in 2021 and later joined ASML Holdings.
Yasin Maganda: Mr. Maganda worked in Prof. Berg's group (2019-2020) on developing multispectral methods digital holography to characterize the microstructure of rough surfaces. Mr. Maganda received his B.S. from Makerene University, Uganda in 2010 and his M.S. from King Faud University, Saudi Arabia in 2014. He joined KSU in 2019.
Dr. Florian Gaudfrin joined Prof. Berg’s group as a visiting scientist in February 2020. His dissertation research concerns the development of remote sensing optical techniques (LIDAR) applied to atmospheric particle characterization over wide spectral ranges. He received his B.Sc. (September 2014) and M.Sc. (September 2016) from the University of Bordeaux and his Ph.D. (February 2020) from the University of Toulouse. His work in Prof. Berg’s group lead to an experiment to film aerosolized soil dust using digital holography and was competed in March 2020. Dr. Gaudfrin now works at the CEA Laser Mégajoule in France.
Dr. Osku Kemppinen: Dr. Kemppinen worked in Prof. Berg's group from 2016 to 2019. As a Research Scientist at the Finnish Meterological Institute, Dr. Kemppinen's work has focused on modeling electromagnetic scattering from complex shaped aerosol particles. He made major advances in describing how the shape, surface texture, and internal structure of particles affects their light-scattering behavior and how this may impact remote-sensing retrievals of such aerosol in the atmosphere. His work at KSU focused on the design and construction of the groundbreaking new drone-instrument, HAPI, which images aerosol particles in urban and agricultural environments. Dr. Kemppinen received a B.Sc., M.S., and Ph.D. from Aalto University in 2010, 2011, and 2016, respectively. In 2017, he was appointed Research Assistant Professor at KSU. Dr. Kemppinen later joined the University of Maryland/NASA-GSFC.
Jesse Laning: Mr Laning was an undergraduate student majoring in Physics (2020) and Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics at KSU. He initially joined Dr. Berg's group in the summer of 2017 as part of Dr. Berg's NSF CAREER award's undergraduate-research internship program. He worked in the group on the HAPI instrument and created an instrument to image aerosol particles in 3D. This latter work led to a U.S. patent application with Laning as co-inventor. His contributions include the design and assembly of sophisticated control electronics for HAPI and experimental research in optical physics. Mr. Laning later joined the University of Central Florida, CREOL.
Ryan Mersmann: Mr. Mersmann was an undergraduate student in Prof. Berg's group majoring in Physics and Mechanical Engineering at KSU (2020). He joined the group in the summer of 2017 as part of Dr. Berg's NSF CAREER award's undergraduate-research internship program and he contributed to the construction of HAPI instrument. Mr. Mersmann later joined NASA-GSFC.
Dr. Justin Jacquot Kielar: Dr. Jacquot Kielar joined Prof. Berg’s group as a visiting scientist in October 2018. His research interests concerned the development of optical techniques applied to atmospheric-particle characterization. He received B.Sc. (2010) and M.Sc. (2012) from the Université de Lorraine and his Ph.D. (2016) from Normandie Université. His early work was to build an icing chamber to create mixed-phase cloud conditions in the laboratory, and later, improved interferometric particle imaging with a focus on liquid water droplets and ice-crystal discrimination. Dr. Jacquot held a postdoctoral position at McGill University (2017-2018) where he developed new optical systems and applied them to ice nucleation phenomenon. With Prof. Berg, he investigated a digital holographic system to image surfaces. Dr. Jacquot later joined Purdue University.
Dr. Jose-María Saiz: Dr. Saiz joined Prof. Berg's group for a half-sabbatical in 2017. As an Associate Professor, his research and teaching at the University of Cantabria (Santander, Spain) was linked to several fields of optics including, light scattering by particulate surfaces and volumes, optical design, phosphorescence materials, and magneto-optical effects. Recently, he has focused on the plasmonic behavior of nanoparticles in the UV and optical analysis of media, connecting micro- and macroscopic spectral properties from absorption cross-section variations to color evolution. At KSU, he researched the optical characterization of particles by means of state-of-art digital holography experiments and participated in educational outreach activities.
Dr. Yuli Heinson: Dr. Heinson joined Prof. Berg's group in 2016 as a postdoctoral associate. Her research background involves the laboratory characterization of irregularly shaped aerosol particles using electromagnetic scattering. In this work, Dr. Heinson discovered unknown patterns in the light scattering behavior of such particles and described quantitative relationships between the patterns and the particle morphology. Her research pursuits combine this laboratory experience with new techniques in digital holography to observe aerosol particles in motion. This work is important for the advancement of aerosol-particle characterization technology and will lay the foundation for future instrument-development. Dr. Heinson received a B.S. from Harbin Normal University in 2010, an M.S. from Creighton University in 2012, and a Ph.D. from KSU in 2016. Dr. Heinson later joined George Washington University.
Dr. Nava R. Subedi: Dr. Subedi received his Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Mississippi State University in 2016 in Prof. Berg's group. His dissertation research concerns the development of new techniques in digital holography for micro-particle characterization. This work focused on the extraction of particle surface-structure from holographic images formed with backscattered light as opposed to forward scattered light, as is more commonly done. Dr. Subedi received a B.S. and M.S. from Tribhuvan University. Dr. Subedi is now at Intel Corp.
Dr. Jehan A. Seneviratne: Dr. Seneviratne received his Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Mississippi State University in 2018. His dissertation explores the patterns that appear in electromagnetic scattering from spherical and nonspherical particles. The work employed the Maxwell volume-integral approach to connect the patterns to morphological aspects of the particles. Mr. Seneviratne received a B.S. and M.S. from the University of Kelaniya and is now faculty at this university.
Satam Alotibi: Mr. Alotibi received his M.S. in Physics from Mississippi State University in 2016 in Prof. Berg's group. His research focused on the potential use of incoherent light sources in the digital holographic characterization of micro-particles.
Jing Wen: Mrs. Wen graduated with an M.S. in Physics from Mississippi State University in 2013 under Prof. Berg's direction. Her thesis work focused on studies of the effects of micro-particle dust layers deposited on solar concentrators for photovoltaic-power applications. Mrs. Wen also served as a research advisor to a high school student from the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science as part the U.S. Army Research Office's Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program.
Nick Fowler: Mr. Fowler worked in Dr. Berg's group at Mississippi State University from 2012-2013. There, he lead experiments in electromagnetic scattering in collaboration with Peter Anderson and Dr. Nava Subedi. As part of this work, he helped to show that a particle's extinction cross section can be extracted from its measured digital hologram. He graduated from MSU in 2012 with a B.Sc. in Physics and then received an M.Sc. in Physics from KSU in 2015.