The Visiting Faculty Program (VFP) seeks to increase the research competitiveness of faculty members and their students at institutions historically underrepresented in the research community in order to expand the workforce vital to the Department of Energy (DOE) mission areas. As part of the program, selected university/college faculty members collaborate with DOE laboratory research staff on a research project of mutual interest. VFP alumni have reported that their experiences enable them to successfully publish articles. Their internships have become instrumental components of their tenure files. Most importantly, a summer at Berkeley Lab enables VFP interns to integrate new research into their teaching curriculums. A VFP internship allows interns to bring back knowledge to their communities and positively impact minority-serving institutions around the country.
This summer, Berkeley Lab’s Workforce Development & Education program spotlighted our VFP interns’ work in a special lecture series. Over the course of four sessions, our VFP interns shared their first experiences working in a new field with each other and guests. They discussed the ways that their new research intersected with their previous work and how a summer at Berkeley Lab deepened their knowledge of their field.
You can view the 2022 Visiting Program Faculty Series below.
Session #1, July 7, 2022, 12:00 PST – 1:30 PST
Presenters: Vidya Ganapati, Richard Lombardini, and Ridwan Sakidja
Session #2, July 21, 2022, 12:00 PST – 1:30 PST
Presenters: Sagar Bhandari, Christopher Berndsen, and Frank Yip
Session #3, July 28, 2022, 12:00 PST – 1:30 PST
Presenters: Anh Thai Nhan, Michael Cohen, and Jim Pesavento
Session #4, August 4, 2022, 12:00 PST – 1:30 PST
Presenters: Xiaokun Yang, Xuechen Zhang, and Cynthia Trevisan
To learn more, please RSVP for the series here.
About our 2022 speakers
Dr. Christopher Berndsen is an Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at James Madison University. He is interested in the biochemistry of plant β-amylases (BAMs). With the VFP program, his lab is moving toward characterizing the substrate of BAMs, starch, in solution.
Dr. Sagar Bhandari is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Engineering at Slippery Rock University, PA. Sagar received his Ph.D. in Applied Physics in “Imaging Electron Flow in Graphene” from Harvard University in 2015. He received his B.S. in Physics and Electrical Engineering from Trinity College in 2009. His research interests are imaging local electronic states in quantum materials and devices that enable innovations in electronics and photonics.
Dr. Michael Cohen studies the biology of a diverse array of environmental microbes in natural and human-engineered environments. Ongoing research in his laboratory seeks to develop efficient biologically-based means for the treatment of organic wastes and wastewaters. His current VFP project with Dr. Trent Northen at LBL on biodegradation polylactic acid plastic falls within this theme.
Dr. Vidya Ganapati is an Assistant Professor of Engineering at Swarthmore College. Her research interests are at the intersection of computational imaging, optics, machine learning, and optimization. This is her second summer at Berkeley Lab, where her group of undergraduate researchers is collaborating with Talita Perciano, Juliane Mueller, and Vincent Dumont in the Computational Research Division.
Dr. Richard Lobardini is an Associate Professor of Physics at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, TX. He received his Ph.D. at Texas Tech University and held a postdoctoral fellowship at Rice University. He is interested in computationally modeling electrodynamical and quantum mechanical systems.
Dr. Anh Thai Nhan is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics and Science, Holy Names University, Oakland, California. He has a wide range of research interests in Applied Mathematics including, but not limited to, Numerical Analysis, Numerical Linear Algebra, Scientific Computing, Biomath Modelling, and Math Education.
Dr. Jim Pesavento is an Associate Professor of Biology at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California. His group specializes in using intact protein mass spectrometry to decipher the ‘histone code’ in the green microalga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. He is passionate about teaching and mentoring undergraduates in authentic scientific research.
Dr. Ridwan Sakidja is a 2003 graduate of the University of Wisconsin Madison (UW-Madison) with a PhD in Metallurgy. He is currently a professor in the department of Physics, Astronomy and Materials Science at Missouri State University. Dr. Sakidja teaches computational physics applied quantum mechanics, structure of solids, electron microscopy and computational materials science. His research interest is in accelerating the design and discovery processes of structural or functionalized materials.
Dr. Cynthia Trevisan is a Professor of Physics at California State University Maritime Academy. Her research involves performing state-of-the-art quantum mechanical calculations in the theory of photon and electron collisions with molecules. She is currently studying photoionization time delays of one-photon ionization of molecules and the molecular-frame photoelectron angular distributions for polyatomic molecules that are produced after a core-level electron is removed due to the absorption of an X-ray photon.
Dr. Xiaokun Yang received his Ph.D. from Florida International University and his dual M.S. from the Department of ECE at FIU and Beihang University. He is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Houston. His research interests include Hardware Acceleration on AI/ML, HW/SW Co-Design on FPGA, ASIC Design and Verification Methodology, and High-Performance System-on-Chip (SoC) Architecture. He has served on several journal reviewers including IEEE Trans. on Computer.
Dr. Frank Yip is a Professor of Chemistry at CSU-Maritime, just recently completing his 10th year on the faculty. Originally from El Paso, TX, he received his AB degree from Princeton University and his PhD from UC Berkeley. His research focuses on electron correlation at the most fundamental level in small atoms and molecules. He has received several NSF research grants to support his investigations (the first such awards at Cal Maritime) and has incorporated numerous gifted undergraduates in his research. He is also the campus coordinator for the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (CSU-LSAMP) at Cal Maritime.
Dr. Xuechen Zhang received his MS and Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from Wayne State University. He is currently an associate professor in the School of Engineering and Computer Science at Washington State University Vancouver. His research interests include the areas of storage systems, operating systems, and high-performance computing. He is a member of the IEEE and ACM.
