PI:
Professor Vesna Mitrovic :
Professor Mitrovic joined the Physics Department at Brown University in 2003. A graduate of Illinois Institute of Technology, she received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 2001. She has done postdoctoral work at Grenoble High Magnetic Field Laboratory (Grenoble, France).
Vesna teaches PH153,Thermal & Statistical Physics, in fall and PH56, Experiment in Modern Physics, in spring. Despite hours spent teaching and in the lab, Vesna always finds spare time for biking and playing tennis.
Graduate Students:
Marc-Andre is the first member of the group and started to work during the summer of 2004 when the whole lab was still packed into boxes. He is from Montreal, Quebec, where he majored in physics at the Universite de Montreal. In 2003, he received a masters degree in theoretical physics on the SO(5) model of superconductivity before starting his Ph.D at Brown University in fall 2003.
His research is focused on the study of frustrated 2D quantum antiferromagnets through NMR on the compound Cs2CuCl4. In particular, he's trying to extract the spin configuration from the NMR spectra. On the practical side, Marc-Andre designed and built NMR probes, goniometers ... in fact, practically anything that had to be built for our new lab.
Besides the hours he loves to spend on machine shop and on his NMR probes, Marc-Andre enjoys swing dancing, music and coffee. He believes in PC royalty. Of course, he comes up with good things about MAC once in a while. Oh!... and you will love his accent!
Rongwei Hu :
Rongwei graduated from China in 2003 with a list of honors and awards. He joined Brown in 2003. Rongwei is working with our collaborator, Dr. Cedomir Petrovic, in Brookhaven National Laboratory. In his free time, he enjoys growing and polishing crystals.
His research interests center on unconventional superconductivity, heavy fermions and Kondo systems in strongly correlated electron systems. Study the relation between structure and properties on high quality single crystals grown from various crystal growth methods.
Georgios Koutroulakis :
Georgios is known as George or Yogurt (according to Fern). Georgios is from Athens, Greece. He completed his undergraduate studies in the Physics Department of the Athens University writing his thesis on the conformal supersymmetric theories. He joined Brown physics department in 2004. One year later he joined our group doing a leap from theory to experimental research.
His research focuses on the study of unconventional superconductivity in heavy fermion materials.
Alumni:
Worasom Kundhikanjana 06 :
Also known as Fern, she graduated from Brown in 2006. Hailing from Bangkok, Thailand, she enjoys physics, cooking Thai food, and especially violent video games. Her past research experience includes work with Professor Nathan Intrator in the Institute of Brain and Neural Systems, as well as in Professor J. Tang's biophysics laboratory.
Fern was working on the study of highly anisotropic magnetic properties in FeSb2.
She is currently a graduate student at Stanford University in the Applied Physics Department.
Adam Straub 06 :
Adam joined the group in his junior year. Aside from soldering random wires together, Adam can often be found playing Go, Frisbee, Ping-Pong, or paddling about in a canoe. He was the coordinator of the Physics DUG, and co-president of the Brown Go Club.
Adam worked on NMR probe design and construction.
After graduation, Adam spent a year studying language in China. He is currently a graduate student at Cornell University in the Applied Physics Department.
and, of course,
Maggie Quencher :
A 9 Tesla superconducting magnet from Oxford Instruments, Maggie is probably the hardest working member of the lab. Not even taking lunch breaks, Maggie works tirelessly to maintain a high field environment for laboratory experiments. Quite the conversationalist, many lab members are known to stay up all night with Maggie chatting about anything from nuclear resonance to how much they hate the Yankees. Maggie has been with us since the summer of 2005, and she's expected to stay on the team for a long while.