Jobs in the Universities (1975-1998)

Visiting Research Professor 1997
Department of Physics, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas Official website

Taught two physics courses

Visiting Reasearch Associate Professor 1987-1997
SubPicosecond and Quantum Radiation Laboratory, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas

Research in the Problem of Activated Barrier Crossing and Molecular Dynamic Simulation of Water
Guided four students partly in their doctoral theses

Visiting Reasearch Associate Professor 1983-1987
Department of Physics, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada Official website

Research on Finite-Size Effects in Critical Phenomena
Taught two physics courses

Visiting Fellow 1975-76, 1983
Theoretical and Solid State Divisions, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay, India Official website

Assisted experimentalists in the interpretation of their data
Guided one student partly toward his Ph.D.
Taught two physics courses

Lecturer 1977-1982
Department of Physics, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, India

Full-time teaching (including laboratories) and Research, various topics
Guided many students toward their M.S. degrees
Guided one student to a Ph.D.
Served on the Boards of Undergraduate and Graduate Studies in Physics
Served on many committees including the ones for selecting new students, for organizing seminars and for interacting with the physics departments of affiliated colleges
Helped organize a Conference on Disordered Systems held in Shillong during March 1981

 DETAILS OF TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Pittsburgh

I started teaching as a Teaching Assistant in 1967 when I was in my final year of the master’s degree at the Panjab University. I taught undergraduate Physics Laboratories. I continued as a Teaching Assistant at the University of Pittsburgh. There I taught Recitations and Laboratories during 1969-73.

TIFR

After getting my Ph. D. I returned to India. During 1975-76, I taught two courses at TIFR. One was a Refresher Course on the basics of Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics in a Summer School for college teachers. Another was a graduate course in Mathematics including Group Theory and Integral Equations.

Shillong

In 1976, I joined the NEHU as a Lecturer. This was a tenured position equivalent to that of an Assistant Professor in an American university. I taught Physics Courses and Laboratories at all levels. In the first year, I taught courses based on The Berkeley Physics Course series and the Feynman Lecture Notes series. Mathematical Physics was taught from Arfken’s book. In the second year, I taught the usual advanced Physics courses including one on Special Topics in Mathematical Physics.

Waterloo

During 1983-87, at the University of Waterloo, I taught a course in Classical Mechanics based on Marion’s book and another one on Solid State Physics based on Kittel’s book..

Lubbock

In the spring of 1997, I taught a freshman physics course based on Physics by Giancoli and a junior course based on Statistical Physics by Reif.

LIST OF COURSES TAUGHT IN INDIA, CANADA AND US

DETAILS OF POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

My doctoral thesis involved numerical analysis of high-temperature series expansions in two variables, using computers, as well as analytical studies of various crossover phenomena in the spherical model. This was one of the first studies to lend support to the Fisher-Barber-Jasnow theory of crossover scaling in critical phenomena.

In my postdoctoral research, I have continued to use the twin techniques of mathematical analysis and numerical computation in applying the general methodology of statistical mechanics in many theoretical areas of chemistry and physics. These are given below roughly in chronological order:

magnetic systems, ferroelectrics, random systems, ideal Bose gas, finite-sized systems, supersymmetric systems, activated barrier crossing (ABC) problems, and water

Apart from working on theoretical problems interesting to me, I have always collaborated with experimentalists in explaining their results theoretically. See papers 5, 6, 38, 39, 47, 51, 52, 57-59, 64, 66, 68, 71-73, 75, 76.

EXPERIENCE OF GUIDING RESEARCH

G. P. Singh

At TIFR, Bombay, I helped Mr. G. P. Singh interpret his ultrasonic attenuation data on the phase transition in RbH₂ PO ₄; see papers 5 and 6. He was awarded a Ph.D. degree by the University of Bombay in 1979.

W. L. Basaiawmoit

I guided one student to a Ph. D. degree when I was at NEHU, Shillong. Miss Wendy L. Basaiawmoit (deceased) was awarded a doctorate in 1983. Her thesis involved calculating the crossover scaling functions for the spatial anisotropy in quasi-two-dimensional Ising models; see papers 11, 12 and 15. I also guided many students to M.S. degrees at NEHU.

R. Krishnan

At Texas Tech, I helped Miss R. Krishnan with the theoretical half of her thesis. She was granted a doctoral degree in 1991. She studied the Kramers activated barrier crossing (ABC) problem using space-dependent friction. She used both the Langevin and the Hamiltonian approaches. While doing this, we discovered that the escape rate has a singular behavior which can be described as a critical phenomenon. This has opened up a completely new facet of the half century old ABC problem. Her theoretical work is described in papers 47, 49, 54-56 and 62.

M. Vedamuthu

I have also helped in guiding Mrs. M. Vedamuthu in her study of the anomalous properties of water using a novel mixture model. Her work is reported in papers 59, 64, 68, 71 and 73. She was recently awarded a Ph. D. degree.

C. H. Cho and J. Urquidi

Even more recently, Mr. Chul Hee Cho obtained a Ph. D. from Texas Tech. I helped him in his research mainly on the study of anomalous properties of water using analytical and computational techniques. His work is reported in papers 56, 72, 75 and 76. In 2000, Mr. Jacob Urquidi obtained his Ph. D. with my guidance.

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