Laurie E. McNeil

Photo courtesy of Steve Exum and Endeavors magazine

I am a Professor of Physics and Astronomy and of Applied and Materials Sciences. Since July 2004 I have served as Chair of the Physics and Astronomy Department, and I formerly was the department's Assistant Chair for Advancement. I am also serving as Interim Chair of the Curriculum in Applied and Materials Sciences during academic year 2007/08, and I formerly held the post of the Curriculum's Director of Graduate Studies (a position now held by Prof. Lu-Chang Qin). From October 2000 to April 2003 I served as Chair of the revision of the general education curriculum for all undergraduates in the University. The new curriculum has been implementated beginning with students entering in Fall 2006. During Fall 2004 I held a Chapman Family Faculty Fellowship, and produced a plan for the transformation of introductory physics teaching at UNC. We are now implementing that plan with the assistance of a grant from NSF. In 2007-09 I am serving as a WOWS Scholar to enhance the representation and success of women in the sciences at UNC-CH. I also have been instrumental in establishing UNC-BEST (UNC Bachelor's Education in Science and Teaching), a joint program between the College of Arts & Sciences and the School of Education to prepare science majors to become high school science teachers.

I have been on the faculty of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 1984. I am a condensed matter/materials physicist, specializing in optical spectroscopy of semiconductors and insulators. I have been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and am a member of the University's Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars, and of the Carolina Speakers program. During the period 1996-1999 I had the honor of holding a Bowman and Gordon Gray Professorship, for "excellence in inspirational teaching of undergraduate students." In November 2000 I visited Tufts University as the Kathryn A. McCarthy Lecturer in Physics. I was the first recipient of this lectureship, which honors a pioneering female physicist who also served as Provost of Tufts. In 2007 I was similarly honored as the inaugural presenter of the Dorothy K. Daspit Lecture at the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College Institute at Tulane University. In April 2004 I was one of three people invited by the AAAS to speak at a conference in Buenos Aires (Argentina) as part of their Lecture Series on Women in Science and Engineering. If you want to see what I look like in other settings, click here. An article appeared in the Winter 2003 issue of Endeavors magazine (published by the UNC-CH Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies) in which I was quoted extensively on the subject of women in science. In March 2002 I was a member of the U.S. delegation to the IUPAP Conference on Women in Physics, and a few pictures from that conference can be seen here.

• Background

  If you want to learn about my professional training and experience, please consult my C.V.

• Teaching

  In Fall 2007 I taught a first-year seminar course, "The Interplay of Music and Physics," (PHYS 051/MUSC 051) together with Prof. Brent Wissick of the Music Department. You might want to see some pictures and video clips of students in that class in past years performing their compositions on instruments they designed and constructed. Follow the links from this page. In Fall 2003 I taught Physics 26 (now 116), the first semester of the introductory sequence for physical science majors. I have also taught the junior/senior optics course Physics 106, most recently in Spring 2000.

• Research

  You can learn more about my research group by visiting my group page. My current research activities at UNC-CH are focused on the optical properties of organic semiconductors.

  • Raman scattering and photoluminescence in organic semiconductors (with Mr. Zhongqiao Ren [UNC-CH] and Dr. Christian Kloc [NTU, Singapore] and Dr. Shubin Liu [RENCI])
  • Hybrid organic/inorganic solar cell materials (with Dr. Yue Wu and Mr. Matt Puster [UNC-CH])
    
    To read more about these and other topics, consult this list of selected recent publications.
    If you want a complete list of my publications, consult this pdf file.

• Professional Activities

  In addition to my university duties, I am active in the American Physical Society (APS). I served on the Executive Committee of the Division of Condensed Matter Physics from 2001-2004, and I have had the same role in the Southeastern Section of the APS (SESAPS). I was a member of the National Task Force on Undergraduate Physics, which was a joint effort of the APS, the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), and the American Institute of Physics (AIP). I was the Chair of APS's Committee on the Status of Women in Physics in 1997. I participate in the APS/AAPT Site Visit project to study ways to improve the climate for women in physics departments, and you may wish to read a summary of that project. At the 2004 APS March Meeting in Montreal I gave a talk entitled "Recruitment and Retention of Female Graduate Students: What Have We Learned From the APS Site Visit Program?". Together with Marc Sher (College of William and Mary), I have conducted a survey of dual-science-career couples and the difficulties they face in finding two jobs in the same place. The report of that survey also includes suggested solutions to the problem. A summary appeared in the February 1999 issue of APS News, and we published an article in the July 1999 issue of Physics Today.

	Department of Physics and Astronomy
	Phillips Hall  CB #3255
	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
	Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3255  USA