New physics associate professor comes with his own lasers

On a recent Friday morning, a moving truck pulled up outside of Farr Hall of Science. Brett Barwick, a new associate professor of physics at Ripon College, opened the driver’s door and walked to the back of the vehicle. Inside were piles of boxes with the label “lasers.”

“The major pieces of equipment (are) a transmission electron microscope and a high-power amplified femtosecond laser system,” Barwick says. “The femtosecond laser was donated to me by my post-doctoral adviser, the late Nobel prize winner Prof. Ahmed Zewail at Cal Tech.”

The lasers have traveled a far distance, first coming from Cal Tech, and then being driven by Barwick from Trinity College in Connecticut to Ripon, Wisconsin.

This fall, Barwick will begin teaching physics at Ripon as the new Harrison E. Farnsworth 1918 Chair in Physics. Barwick says he is looking forward to teaching undergraduate coursework and hopes he will be able to use some of the high-power lasers in his upper-level physic classes at Ripon.

Originally from Minnesota, Barwick is a Midwesterner at heart. Although he is in Wisconsin now, Barwick says he remains a passionate Vikings fan.

Lauren Hince ’18
Blaine, Minnesota


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