Smallwood, Christopher

Headshot

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

Christopher Smallwood's research focuses on spectroscopy studies 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 conducting optical measurements of rubidium vapor, and he received a PhD in Physics from UC Berkeley in 2014 developing photoemission spectroscopy techniques to study high-temperature superconductors. From 2014-2018 he worked as a postdoctoral researcher, first at JILA (University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology) and then at the University of Michigan, where he developed and used ultrafast spectroscopy techniques to study light-matter interactions in solids. Between college and graduate school, he also taught fifth grade from 20052007 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.