Erik Helgren Faculty Profile
Erik Helgren
Associate Professor & Chair
Department of Physics
- E-mail: erik.helgren@csueastbay.edu
- Phone: (510) 885-4604
- Office: Sc N 231
- Vitae: View my CV
- Chair for the Department of Physics at CSUEB since 2014
- Co-director of the Social Impact Solar (SIS) program, i.e., the Solar Suitcase Program since 2015
- Awarded the George and Miriam Phillips Outstanding Professor Award for the 2018-2019 academic year
- Board of Directors, CSUEB Institute for STEM Education since 2015
- Director of the CSUEB Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation 2010-2015
Background: Dr. Helgren is a Bay Area native having grown up in San Francisco and attending Lowell High School. He attended UCLA, earning a B.S. in Physics in 1996, after which he spent time working as a Systems Engineer for Hughes/Raytheon Defense Systems in El Segundo, CA. 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 in the Fall of 2008.