From the 2025 Physics Alumni Newsletter
Daniel Kim-Shapiro
Daniel Kim-Shapiro stepped down as chair in June 2025 after eight years of service and began a yearlong sabbatical focused on research. His lab continues its work with Research Professor Stephen Baker, graduate student Thilini Karunarathna, and new graduate students Ryan Yoder and Aracely Gutierrez-Rodriguez. The group remains active in collaborations on nitric oxide and ferroheme research.
Paul Anderson
Paul Anderson taught his last regular class, moved with his wife to a retirement community south of Tucson, and formally retired at the end of June. He continues as a research professor, collaborating with former students Richard Dudley, Emily Foley, Shohreh Gholizadeh Siahmazgi, Ian Newsome, and Amanda Peake, as well as undergraduate applied mathematics major Catherine (Shuyu) Chen and a collaborator at the University of Valencia.
He and his wife have enjoyed southern Arizona, hiking, and travel, including time in Breckenridge and a trip to Iceland connected with a conference on black holes.
Natalie Holzwarth
Natalie Holzwarth continues research on materials in their electronic ground states with graduate student D. Cory Lynch and enjoys ongoing discussions with students and colleagues. The Condensed Matter Collaborative Seminar has been invigorated by the participation of experimental groups and the new theory and computational groups of Steven Winter and Emilie Huffman.
The Holzwarth family arranged with Wake Forest’s endowment office to establish the annual George Holzwarth Memorial Biophysics Lecture. The first speaker, M. Shane Hutson of Vanderbilt University, knew George as a research mentor and completed his M.S. degree in 1993.
Keith Bonin
Keith Bonin spent the previous academic year on faculty leave after completing six years as Vice Provost for Research. He continued a cancer-research collaboration with colleagues in western France, began collaborating with Ajay Kandada on quantum optics, and continued biophysics work with Martin Guthold on fibrin-fiber clots.
Bonin and Kandada also developed an undergraduate quantum-optics laboratory using a kit funded through Kandada’s NSF CAREER grant. The experiment is being used in Intermediate Laboratory and Optics courses.
Ajay Ram Srimath Kandada
Ajay Kandada’s research group has grown to five graduate students. Undergraduate thesis students moved to graduate programs at Duke and Princeton, Katie Koch published two papers and received the SPIE Women in Optics Award, Evan Kumar has two manuscripts under review, and Bhargava Jogi completed his qualifying exams and is leading several experiments.
Kandada expanded collaborations with Keith Bonin on quantum-light spectroscopy, Oana Jurchescu on organic radiation dosimeters, Daniel Kim-Shapiro on a potential antidote for carbon-monoxide poisoning, and Timo Thonhauser and Steven Winter on new research directions.