Faculty & Staff

Faculty & Faculty Advisors

Dr. Kathryn Grimm

Associate Professor of Physics and Interim Chair
Particle Physics
North Science 217
(510) 885-3350

Kathryn Grimm received her BS degree in Physics from UCLA. For her PhD she studied particle physics at Stony Brook University.  Prior to coming to CSUEB Kathryn worked at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, and was on the team that found evidence for the new particle the Higgs Boson.  She is now studying the properties of the Higgs Boson, as well as searching for other new particles. 

Dr. Erik Helgren

Professor of Physics
Solid State Physics
North Science 231
(510) 885-4604
Email | Website

Dr. Helgren is a Bay Area native having grown up in San Francisco.  He attended UCLA, earning a B.S. in Physics in 1996, after which he spent a year working in Industry for Hughes/Raytheon Defense Systems in El Segundo, CA as a Systems Engineer.  He continued with his graduate education at UCLA and focused on Condensed Matter Physics, specializing in microwave and millimeter-wave (or terahertz) spectroscopy techniques to study the electrodynamics of materials under the guidance of Dr. George Gruner and was awarded his doctorate in 2002.  Dr. Helgren took a post-doctoral position at UCSD working with Drs. Frances Hellman and Bob Dynes in the Department of Physics and his research focused on magnetic semiconductor materials.  He accepted a joint position as an Assistant Project Scientist in the Department of Physics at UC Berkeley & in the Materials Science Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and worked there until joining the faculty here at California State University East Bay.

Dr. Derek Kimball

Professor of Physics
Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
South Science 251
(510) 885-4634
Email Website

Prof. Jackson Kimball’s research focuses on using techniques of experimental atomic physics and nonlinear optics for precision tests of the fundamental laws of physics.  In particular, his group is searching for exotic spin-dependent interactions that may have a connection to dark matter or dark energy. Prof. Jackson Kimball’s work with several collaborators on a number of different projects has established the most stringent constraints on exotic dipole-dipole interactions of electrons, neutrons, and protons at the atomic scale. A recent experiment searching for a spin-gravity coupling of the proton improved constraints on such effects by over three orders of magnitude.
 
Prof. Jackson Kimball has mentored over 50 undergraduate students in his research laboratory over the past decade. Eighteen of those students have gone on to graduate physics programs, and three of his students have been awarded National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships.
 
Prof. Jackson Kimball received his Ph.D. in 2005 from the University of California at Berkeley under the mentorship of Prof. Dmitry Budker, where he studied nonlinear magneto-optical rotation and its application to precision measurement of atomic spin precession. Prof. Jackson Kimball is the co-author of Atomic Physics: an exploration through problems and solutions (Oxford University Press, 2008), Optical Magnetometry (Cambridge University Press, 2013), and over 50 peer-reviewed research articles.

Dr. Arran Phipps

Assistant Professor of Physics
Dark Matter Research Physicist
South Science 251
(510) 885-3401

Dr. Arran Phipps was born and raised in the Bay Area, originally from Fremont. After leaving high school as a junior, he attended Skyline Community College in San Bruno, CA and decided to pursue a career in physics. Dr. Phipps transferred to UC Berkeley and completed a BA in Physics with honors in 2008. He then stayed at UC Berkeley for graduate school and was awarded his PhD in 2016 with a dissertation title of "Ionization Collection in Detectors of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search" under Prof. Bernard Sadoulet. Following graduate school, Dr. Phipps spent four years as a Kavli Postdoctoral Fellow in Prof. Kent Irwin's group at Stanford University before joining Cal State East Bay in 2020. As an Assistant Professor he has engaged undergraduate students in the development of low-noise, cryogenic charge amplifiers and helped to form the SPLENDOR dark matter search collaboration with Los Alamos National Laboratory and Stanford University. More recently, he has participated in the construction and operation of the Eos neutrino detector located at UC Berkeley. Dr. Phipps uses his non-traditional background as a high school dropout, community college transfer student, and teenage parent to promote research by underserved undergraduates, giving students the foundation to pursue careers in the physical sciences.

Dr. Ryan Smith

Associate Professor of Physics
Ultrafast Optics, Solid State Physics
North Science 216
(510) 885-3448
Email | Website


Ryan Smith comes from the east coast, where he completed his B.S. in Physics in 2004 at Georgia Tech. His Ph.D. work at the University of Colorado involved using lasers to study the connection between quantum states of light and many-body electronic dynamics in semiconductor nanostructures. Dr. Smith spent a year in South Korea researching quantum dot solar cells, before coming to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow in the Materials Science Division. At Berkeley, Dr. Smith developed techniques and performed experiments in ultrafast optical and terahertz spectroscopy on nanostructure materials such as graphene and plasmonics. Dr. Smith joined the Physics Department at California State University East Bay in the fall of 2015 and is enthusiastic about engaging students in learning and research. Dr. Smith's research interests: enewable energy materials, ultrafast optics, spectroscopy from the terahertz to visible range, nanoscale phenomena, advanced laboratory education.

Dr. Jason Singley

Professor of Physics
Solid State Physics
Email

Currently on Sabbatical

Dr. Singley is a Professor of Physics and has been teaching at Cal State East Bay since 2003. Dr. Singley strives to create a welcoming and supportive environment for students and faculty alike. He is committed to excellence in teaching and is an advocate for the use of innovative instructional practices. Having had a formative experience working on faculty-mentored research as an undergraduate, he is a strong supporter of faculty research and the opportunities it affords for Cal State East Bay students. Dr. Singley has served in a variety of roles at Cal State East Bay, including Co-Director of the Semester Conversion Initiative, founding Director of the Center for Student Research, founding Board Member of the Institute for STEM Education, Chair of the Department of Physics, and Dean of the College of Science.He received his B.S. degree in physics from San Diego State University; his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, San Diego; and before joining the faculty at Cal State East Bay was a Postdoctoral Research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Lecturers

Dr. Louis Villanueva

Lecturer of Physics
North Science 232
(510) 885-4717
Email

Dr. Daniel Barsky

Lecturer of Physics
North Science 232
(510) 885-3448

Dr. Steve Asztalos

Lecturer of Physics
North Science 217
(510) 885-3350
Email | Website

Dr. Kris Wedding-Crowell

Lecturer of Physics
(510) 885 - 3350
Email

Dr. Solomon Obolu

Lecturer of Physics
North Science 142C
(510) 885-3488
Email

Dr. Doug Codron

Lecturer of Physics
(510) 885 - 3441
Email

Dr. Reza Rofan

Lecturer of Physics
(510) 885 - 3401
Email

Staff

Cyndy Lopez

Administrative Support Coordinator
(510) 885 - 3401
Email

If you need support please contact the Natural Sciences Hub at 510-885-3452 or email them at naturalsci@csueastbay.edu

Mark Callaghan

Instructional Support Technician
(510) 885 - 3405
Email

Blanca Ruiz

Instructional Support Technician
(510) 885 - 3405
Email