Faculty & Staff
Faculty & Faculty Advisors
Dr. Kathryn Grimm
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
Dr. Arran Phipps
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
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