Department of Physics
Georgetown University
Washington DC 20057
Tel: +1-202-687-5982
Fax: +1-202-687-2087
email: vankeu@physics.georgetown.edu

Education
Ph.D. Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, May 1990. Thesis dissertation: “Light Scattering Studies of Magnetic Particle Dispersions” Advisors: Dr. Alfred Bortz, Prof. Stanley Charap.
M.S. Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, May 1986.
B.S. Physics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, May 1984. Summa Cum Laude.
One year of B.S. studies as exchange student, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zürich, Switzerland Department of Physics.

Employment

8/99-present: • 8/99-7/05: Assistant Professor, 08/05-present Associate Professor, 07/07-present, Chair Department of Physics, Georgetown University. Teaching: undergraduate mechanics, undergraduate optics, and graduate advanced characterization methods.Research: organic nanoparticle preparation and characterization using fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, dynamic light scattering and optical spectroscopy; developing nanoparticles as anti-cancer drugs and as MRI contrast agents; designing several types of polymer microchips for biomarker detection, and optical communications.
(see research page)

1/96-5/99: Research Scientist, BASF AG, Advanced Polymer Research, Yokkaichi, Japan. I was the manager of BASF’s nonlinear optics research lab in Japan and the contact person in Japan for BASF as member of the Nonlinear Photonics Materials project sponsored by the Japanese government (MITI).

5/93-1/96: Visiting researcher, National Institute of Materials and Chemical Research, Tsukuba, Japan.
I spent two and a half years working as a visiting research in the Molecular Photonics Group of Dr. Hiro Matsuda, where I built up a laboratory for pump/probe measurements and worked on the characterization of the third order nonlinear optical properties of organic nanoparticles, metal complexes and polydiacetylenes.

1/93-5/93: Visiting researcher, Department of Chemistry, Carnegie Mellon University (Prof. G. Patterson). In between Germany and Japan I spent a few months back at CMU, renovating an experiment for third harmonic generation measurements.

9/90-10/92: Post-doctoral fellow, BASF AG, Department of Solid State Physics, Ludwigshafen, Germany.
I spent two years as a post-doc at BASF AG developing fiber optic light scattering apparatus and applying hem to various disperse systems. One apparatus was a fiber optic implementation of diffusing wave spectroscopy, the other was a "micro" dynamic light scattering experiment in a concentrated dispersion.

1/85-5/90: Magnetics Technology Center, Carnegie Mellon University. My Ph.D. thesis project consisted of designing and building an apparatus to characterize magnetic particle dispersions using static light scattering; with it I studied various commercial formulations of magnetic dispersions.

05/87-08/87: Disk Development Lab, IBM General Products Division, San Jose, CA. As a summer intern  at IBM I applied a technique for dispersing particles by chemical adhesion of colloidal silica to the surface to Ba-ferrite magnetic particle systems.

05/85-08/85: Magnetic Media Lab, Eastman Kodak, Co., Rochester, NY. My summer '85 internship involved renovating a titration calorimeter and using it to measure the heats of adsorption of surfactants onto magnetic particles.
 
 

Member American Physical Society, SPIE, Sigma Chi.
Fluent in German, working knowledge of Japanese.
Dual U.S./ Irish citizenship.
2nd dan in Isshinryu karate