Assistant Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Research webpage: https://smallwoodgroup.wordpress.com

Email

Preferred: christopher.smallwood@sjsu.edu

Telephone

Preferred: (408) 924-5270

Education

• PhD, Physics, UC Berkeley, 2014
• MA, Physics, UC Berkeley, 2010
• AB, Physics, Harvard University, 2005

Bio

Dr. Smallwood's research focuses on the spectroscopic interrogation of solid-state materials, and on the development and characterization of interferometric optical devices. He received an AB in Physics from Harvard College in 2005 where he conducted precision measurements of atomic rubidium vapor, and he received a PhD in Physics from UC Berkeley in 2014 where he developed techniques in time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy to study high-temperature superconductors. He spent two years as a postdoctoral research associate at JILA (University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology) from 2014–2016 and two years as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Physics at the University of Michigan from 2016–2018, where he specialized in using ultrafast spectroscopy techniques to study light-matter interactions in solid-state media. Between college and graduate school, he also taught fifth grade from 2005–2007 with Teach For America at Leo James Leo Elementary School in Mission, TX. He is the recipient of a National Research Council postdoctoral Research Associateship award at NIST, and the 2013 Lars Commins Memorial Award in Experimental Physics at UC Berkeley.