I am a theoretical physicist with a diverse research portfolio spanning quantum physics, quantum field theory, relativistic astrophysics, and general relativity. My work has earned international recognition, particularly for my contributions to the study of white dwarfs, neutron stars, pulsars, and low-mass black holes. Currently, I am working on topics related to quantum gravity. Together with students and international collaborators, I have published around 200 papers, authored four books, and delivered approximately 300 presentations at national and international scientific conferences. Through these collaborations, students receive a well-rounded education that prepares them for positions in both industry and academia. 

Hi, I am Arlette Baljon and currently the UG advisor. Please come to my office hours with questions; you can find them in the EAB system. https://studentsuccess.sdsu.edu/navigate-sdsu

I grew up in The Netherlands, where I obtained a masters degree in mathematics and theoretical physics at the University of Utrecht. When I started in college about 4 students in a room of 200 or so were female. I got frustrated with the male dominated world (I still sometimes do) and after my junior year actually dropped out and spend 5 years or so doing other things before coming back to finish the degree. After that I was accepted in the PhD program at the University of Chicago. I actually had been thinking of specializing in the Philosophy of Science but realized that I am not a strong enough writer. I now enjoy talking to the philosophers here at SDSU and actually was asked to serve on one of their MS thesis committees. Mathematics comes very easy to me (my father used to show me off as a 3 year old) so a stuck with that. I spend 5 years in Chicago and 6 years doing postdocs in Baltimore and Ithaca. During that period all three of my children were born. They are grown up now, the oldest is an anthropologist specialized in human-computer interactions for health care applications. The middle one is an immune-engineering researching nanoparticle vaccines. The youngest just graduated from college and wants to go into public policy.

In the summer of 1999 I joined the physics faculty here at San Diego State University. At this moment, I enjoy working with an interdisciplinary group of biologists, engineers, and mathematicians on biophysical research topics (Viral Information Institute). In particular my group models mucus by means of large-scale computer simulations. Mucus is a temporary cross-linked polymeric network. Memory of deformations is stored in the sample’s topology and dynamics. Mucus plays an important role as part of an animal’s immune system. Most viruses, bacteria, and phages (viruses that kill bacteria) are located in mucosal surface. They all coevolve together. E.g. mucin-strands modify chemical groups on phages and bacteria remodel the mucus structure when moving through it. I am interested in this symbiosis between bacteria, phages and their host and the role of mucus in this process. Concretely we try to understand conditions that help phage cross the cell layers and their mucosal surfaces to enter the lymph system.  Once phages are inside our bodies, they become part of the immune system and protect against sepsis.

My gateway drug into science was dinosaurs, terrifying yet safely long dead.  But after I learned paleontologists spend their careers trudging through deserts or hanging off cliffs, I decided physics was more for me.  While I worked hard, spending thousands of hours on math, physics, and programming, helpful mentors and good luck opened doors for me. While an undergraduate at UC Davis, I worked part-time at the campus cyclotron, which got me recruited by the nuclear theory group at the University of Washington for a Ph.D, and my adviser opened doors to postdocs at Caltech and Los Alamos.  I was fortunate enough to get a faculty position at Louisiana State University, and, when my wife moved to San Diego for a job, even luckier to get a position here at SDSU.  I didn’t spend all my time on physics: an early encounter with The Hobbit led to a lifelong interest in writing. At Davis I studied science fiction under Kim Stanley Robinson, who later won multiple Hugo awards and who still visits the honors course I teach on science fiction, and towards the end of my Ph.D I earned enough money in a science fiction contest to fund my first trip to Europe; in Baton Rouge I won money in poetry slams in bars. Since then I’ve become an accredited professional science fiction writer and member of the Science Fiction Writers of America.

 These days I’m not writing much fiction or poetry, instead focusing on teaching and research involving the quantum physics of atomic nuclei and enormous supercomputers, as well as novel methods in quantum computing.  I am grateful for the opportunity to open doors for my students, who often intern and eventually get jobs at national labs such as Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Lawrence Berkeley.  Networking in science is important and, frankly, part of the fun has been to make and meet friends and colleagues around the world, in Europe and Asia, and talk about physics and math and computing, and occasionally poetry, science fiction, or even dinosaurs.

My research focuses on the physics of ultrashort pulsed laser light. Current interests are: the generation and measurement of femtosecond vortex beams with applications to microfluidics, and the use of femtosecond lasers in two-photon microscopy with applications in neuroscience.

Sanjay Behura is an experimental quantum physicist who specializes in growing quantum materials just one atom thick. He is developing and testing these quantum 2D materials for applications in quantum computing and renewable energy. An avid cricket fan and music aficionado, Dr. Behura looks forward to being in San Diego and at SDSU during a time of growth and endless possibility.

My research is in theoretical and computational physics, spanning the interface between nuclear physics and astrophysics. My main interest is in the nuclear history of matter from the start of the big bang to the present day, as probed in measurements of terrestrial matter, meteorites, and stars.

I am a physicist specializing in nanophotonics, ultrafast lasers, and cavity quantum electrodynamics. I am currently investigating quantum electrodynamics effects in GaN-based lasers and silicon microcavities. Research in my lab focuses on the different ways of controlling light on the subwavelength scale via modifying the photonic environment.

The main focus areas of my research include:

Using 3D bioprinting technology to develop tissue mimetic tumor models that can be used to study and optimize the effects of spatially fractionated radiotherapy (SFRT) approaches such as GRID, LATTICE, and PATHY.

Applying 3D bioprinted co-culture tumor models to investigate and optimize the use of SFRT techniques for immune priming. This is done using SFRT combined with immune checkpoint inhibition, radiosensitizers, and a pulsed treatment approach to overcome the treatment-induced evolutionary resistance of tumor cells.

Developing a transportable 3D cell culture platform for assessing 2D distributions of relative biological effectiveness of proton radiotherapy beams and emerging radiotherapy technologies such as FLASH.

Professor of Physics Torikachvili’s research is in experimental condensed matter physics, and his interest is the study of novel superconducting and magnetic materials. This study consists in searching for new materials and studying their structural, electronic, magnetic, and thermal properties. The materials investigated include magnetic superconductors, valence fluctuation, heavy fermion, and high temperature superconducting oxide compounds. His laboratory is equipped for the synthesis of single crystals using flux growth techniques, and studying them under extreme conditions of temperature (0.35 – 400 K), pressure (0 – 10 GPa), and magnetic field (0 – 9 T).

Gordon Shackelford works for the Department of Physics within the College of Sciences at the San Diego campus as a Emeritus Lecturer. He is a former Associate Dean at College of Sciences.

Dr. Usha Sinha is a medical and imaging physicist specializing in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and informatics. Her areas of interest include development of novel techniques for quantitative imaging including diffusion and relaxivity imaging, creation of quantitative brain and musculoskeletal atlases capturing structure and function, and application of atlases of normal populations to explore subtle differences in diseased conditions. She is presently focused on segmentation of brain tumors and cartilage, characterization of brain tumors for decision support, creation of cartilage atlases with application to early detection of structural changes in osteoarthritis, and white matter brain atlases to explore age related changes and dementia.