简介

Prof. Urbach completed his B.A. in Physics at Amherst College (1985), his Ph.D. at Stanford University (1993), and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin (1993-1996). He joined the Physics Department at Georgetown University as an Assistant Professor in 1996 and was promoted to Professor of Physics in 2006. He served as chair of the Physics Department in 2001-02 and again from 2003-07, as the co-Director of the Program on Science in the Public Interest from its founding until 2011, and is the founding Director of the Institute for Soft Matter Synthesis and Metrology. In 2009-10, he served as a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the Department of Energy. Prof. Urbach’s research interests include complex dynamics and biophysics. He has received a Sloan Foundation fellowship and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and research funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, NASA, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, NIST, the Petroleum Research Foundation, the Research Corporation, and the Whitaker Foundation. Prof. Urbach and his collaborators study complex dynamics in a variety of systems, ranging from shaking sand to cytoskeletal proteins to migrating neurons. Using the techniques of statistical physics and nonlinear dynamics, together with advanced imaging techniques, image processing, and computer simulations, they are trying to develop quantitative, testable descriptions of multifaceted, interacting, ever changing systems that might at first glance seem like a complicated mess. For details, visit the Dynamics Imaging Lab website.