From the 2008 Physics Alumni Newsletter
Let me give you a few updates on things happening in the Department. Daniel Kim-Shapiro is the first recipient of the Harbert Family Distinguished Chair for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship. Provost Tiefenthaler says “The chair is to be awarded to an outstanding teacher whose work is of international renown.” You may recall that last year Professor Kin-Shapiro received a prestigious MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health for his work studying the effects of Nitric Oxide in Sickle Cell disease.
Bill Kerr retired as of July 1 after 38 years at Wake Forest. We are very grateful to Bill for the excellent teaching, advising, and research that he has done during his time here. Luckily for us, Bill is planning to stay active in research and so we expect to continue to see a lot of him.
We have hired Timo Thonhauser as Bill’s replacement. Timo’s research is in the area of theoretical and computational condensed matter physics. He received his Ph.D. from Karl-Franzens-Universität, Austria in 2001 and has had postdoctoral positions at Pennsylvania State University, Rutgers University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also spent a year as a visiting scientist at MIT.
I also have a couple of promotions to report. Fred Salsbury was promoted to associate professor on July 1 and Rick Matthews has been promoted again. You may recall that a little over a year ago Rick was promoted to the position of Associate Provost. This past spring he was promoted again to become the Associate Provost for Information Systems. This means that he is now in charge of this very important part of the University. We wish Rick the best in his new job.