Susanne Lee and Robert Geer are new faculty members in the Department of Physics.

Lee comes to the University from Lawrence University where she was an assistant professor of physics (1993-96) and a participating guest at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Receiving her Ph.D. in applied physics from Harvard University in 1990, after earning her B.S. at Cornell University in 1982 and master’s degree from Harvard in 1983, Lee became a post-doctoral fellow at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 1991 to 1993.

As a principal and co-principal investigator at Lawrence, she was responsible for grants in applied physics totaling nearly $1 million.

Lee received a number of honors while attending undergraduate and graduate school, including at Harvard a Division of Applied Sciences Fellowship, research fellowship, and a prestigious Abbot Fellowship.

Robert Geer was a research physicist at the Center for Bio/Molecular Science and Engineering of the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) from 1995 to 1996. For three years prior to at the NRL he was a National Research Council research associate.

Geer taught at Northern Virginia Community College as an adjunct professor (1995-96) prior to coming to Albany. Previous to that he was a teaching assistant working at the University of Michigan.

He received his Bachelor of Science degree at Miami University in 1986 and his doctorate in condensed matter physics from the University of Minnesota in 1991. Geer has also held a postdoctoral position at the University of Colorado in 1991-92 and a visiting scientist at AT&T Laboratories the year before that.

Among his honors received are a National Research Council postdoctoral fellowship (1992-1995), the Alan Berman Research Publication Award from the NRL in 1994, an IBM graduate fellowship in 1990-91, and the Aneesur Rahman Prize from the University of Minnesota’s school of physics and astronomy in 1990.

“Both Lee and Geer have enormous value in teaching and research,” said Hassa Bakhru, chair of the Department of Physics.

“Lee is setting up a lab in material science, and she has already received several grants from different industries and various other companies. Geer is teaching courses on optol electronics, which is very useful to graduate students, and general physics. He is also a faculty member in the Center for Advanced Technology.”