Courses Taught

Past courses taught have included advanced graduate courses in Statistical Mechanics and Solid State Physics, graduate and upper division courses in Mathematical Methods for Physics, Quantum Mechanics and Modern Physics, Analytical Mechanics, Thermal Physics, and introductory level courses for Physics majors, for premeds, and for nonscience majors.

Courses projected in the coming semesters are on physics and nonlinear science for bio-related interdisciplinary training. The most recent example of educational/research activities related to interdisciplinary work of biological relevance is provided by the following recent news item:

UNM one of 10 institutions nationwide to receive $1 million grant for Interdisciplinary Graduate Education from Howard Hughes Medical Institute (November 23, 2005)
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Biomedical science is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary, as reliant on the physical and computational sciences as on biology. But how are the biomedical investigators of the future going to learn to work effectively across disciplinary lines? Ten universities in the United States, including the University of New Mexico, will help lead the way with grants of $1 million from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to initiate fundamental changes in the way Ph.D. scientists are trained at their respective institutions. UNM was one of 10 schools out of 132 applicants to be awarded the grant. The three-year grants will be used to develop innovative graduate education programs designed to produce a cadre of scientists with the knowledge and skills to conduct research at the interface between the biomedical, physical, and computational sciences.

Distinguished Professor of Biology James Brown is the primary investigator for UNM. He, along with co-PI’s Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy Nitant Kenkre; Professor Stephanie Forrest, computer science; Research Professor Felisa Smith, biology; and Professor Edward Bedrick, mathematics and statistics and internal medicine, plan to develop a cohesive interdisciplinary sciences program.

Strategies include the consolidation of graduate training activities from biology, computer sciences, math/statistics/ and physics/astronomy. They will also collaborate with scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Santa Fe Institute. UNM’s program will feature a new core curriculum spanning departments with five new graduate courses including two interdisciplinary courses, two seminar courses and one summer school course at another institution.

Additionally, thesis research will be conducted in small intensely focused interdisciplinary teams composed of senior scientists, post doctorates and graduate students all working collaboratively on related scientific questions. A key point of the training experience involves working in these teams to do model building and model evaluation through experimentation and brainstorming. Teams will conduct intensive sessions weekly to address multiple problems with a common theme – going through all phases of research (brainstorming, problem definition, writing and publishing results.