Faculty & Contact - Bishop's University

Below is a list of faculty that are active in the department, and available to students with course specific questions. If you need administrative support, we encourage you to refer your questions to one of the following;

The Chair of the department (see below) can address detailed program questions, including program requirements, planning and selection, research opportunities, graduate studies, and more.
The Academic Advisor, if available, can offer support including course registration and course load, important dates, academic policies and more.
The Academic Deans serve as the academic and administrative anchors to the professors within their Faculties or Schools as well as the students.

Faculty of the Physics and Astronomy Department:

Contact Information is found in the BU Directory

Dr. Ariel Edery

Full Professor

Dr. Edery is a professor in the Department of Physics since July 2007. He completed a B.Sc. in Physics at McGill University, a Master’s degree in Theoretical Nuclear Physics at Queen’s University and a Ph.D. (1998) at the Université de Montréal in the area of Gravitation and Field theory.

He was a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University and then worked in Maryland for a NASA GSFC contractor on the lunar trajectory design of the WMAP mission and other NASA satellite missions. In spring 2008, he was awarded a five-year grant by NSERC for his project entitled Conformal anomaly in the gravitationally coupled magnetic monopole and vacua effects under external conditions.

Dr. Edery’s Personal Website

Dr. Valerio Faraoni

Full Professor – Interim Dean of Natural Sciences and Mathematics

Valerio Faraoni earned a BSc in Physics (Laurea in Fisica) at the University of Pavia, Italy, and an MSc and PhD (1991) in Astrophysics under the supervision of Prof. George F.R. Ellis at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy.

Dr. Faraoni has held various research and teaching appointments at the University of Victoria, B.C., the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, India, the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, and the University of Northern British Columbia. He came to Bishop’s University in 2005, where he is currently a Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy.

Research

Theoretical Cosmology: Dark Energy and Modified Gravity

Theoretical cosmology studies the dynamics, origin, evolution, and fate of the universe, and the formation of structures (galaxies, galaxy clusters, and superclusters) in it. In 1998 it was discovered, by studying distant supernovae, that the expansion of the universe is accelerated. Many theoretical models have been proposed in order to explain this shocking discovery and they mostly fall into two classes: dark energy and modified gravity. Dark energy models assume that Einstein’s theory of gravity (general relativity) is valid and that a mysterious form of dark energy of unknown nature permeates the universe and makes up 70% of its energy content. This dark energy must necessarily have exotic properties, such as a negative pressure. The current observational data seem to require an even more negative pressure and more exotic energy (called phantom energy), which may cause the universe to end at a finite time in the future in a Big Rip singularity (the end of time), in which all bound objects-galaxies, planets, humans, atoms-are ripped apart by increasing gravitational forces. If phantom energy is really fuelling the cosmic acceleration, we probably have to abandon Einstein’s general relativity in favour of alternative gravity theories such as, for example, scalar-tensor gravity, a generalization of Einstein’s theory.

The second class of models, modified gravity, does not require exotic dark energy but instead modifies Einstein’s relativity with corrections that only affect large (cosmological) scales.

Dr. Faraoni’s research explores both classes of models, trying to fully understand their dynamics, explain the cosmic acceleration, develop models that are theoretically consistent and compatible with available experiments, study their predictions (e.g., will the universe accelerate forever? Will it end in a Big Rip?) and related issues such as the production of gravitational waves, or the accretion of phantom energy onto black holes or wormholes. Long term goals include the development of the correct theory of gravity (it is possible that departures from Einstein’s gravity are unobservable at the small Solar System scales but are already observed in the cosmic acceleration), finding out if dark energy actually exists and, if so, determining precisely its strange properties, understanding the early universe and obtaining information, otherwise inaccessible on Earth, on the high energy physics that left an imprint in the cosmic microwave background and in the distribution of galaxies and galaxy clusters.

Other interests include the study of black holes embedded in a cosmological background, foundations and possible violations of the Equivalence Principle (the basis of relativistic gravity) in high energy physics, and the thermodynamics of spacetime.

Dr. Faraoni collaborates with many researchers worldwide on the subjects above.

Details on his research and an up-to-date list of publications can be found on Google Scholar.

Dr. Lorne Nelson

Full Professor

Professor Nelson received his Ph.D. in 1984 in the area of theoretical astrophysics (cannibalistic binary interactions). He subsequently held a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT (Center for Space Research) that led to pioneering work on the structure and evolution of a completely new class of substellar objects known as Brown Dwarfs.

From 1986-1988 he was a research fellow at CITA (Canadian Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics). He joined the department of physics at Bishop’s as an Assistant Professor in 1988 and became a Full Professor in 1998. In 1995 he won the Chancellor’s Prize for teaching and he is currently a Canada Research Chair in Astrophysics.

Dr. Nelson’s Personal Website

Dr. Jason Rowe

Full Professor, Canada Research Chair in Exoplanet Astrophysics – Department Chairperson

Dr. Jason Rowe received his PhD at the University of British Columbia for his work on measuring the reflectively of extra-solar planets using photometric measurements from the Canadian MOST Satellite. After his PhD Dr. Rowe joined the Kepler team as a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow contributing towards the first Kepler discoveries and was awarded the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement medal for his work on measuring fundamental parameters of exoplanets.

Dr. Rowe is currently recruiting Undergraduate and Graduate students.

Dr. Rowe then joined the SETI Institute as a research scientist and member of Kepler Science office and his continued work on exoplanets lead to the discovery of Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone of main-sequence stars and bulk validation of 812 extrasolar planets. During his tenure at SETI he was awarded his second NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement medal. Dr. Rowe then joined the JWST NIRISS Instrument team at Université de Montréal to develop techniques and tools to measure the atmospheres on extrasolar planets. Dr. Rowe is now a Canada Research Chair in Exoplanet Astrophysics, his current research goals are to determine what properties make a planet ‘Earth-like’ and whether there is life beyond Earth. He has authored and co-authored over 200 publications with over 16000 total citations.

Dr. John Ruan

Associate Professor, Canada Research Chair in Multi-Messenger Astrophysics

Dr. John Ruan received his PhD at the University of Washington , and was then a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University, before joining the faculty at Bishop’s. Dr. Ruan is an observational astronomer with research interests in nucleosynthesis of the heaviest elements, black hole accretion, and cosmology.

Dr. Ruan’s Personal Website

Part-time Faculty of the Physics and Astronomy Department:

Dr. Fayçal Hammad

Adjunct Professor

Fayçal Hammad earned a BSc, as well as an MSc, in the Physics of Materials and Electronic Components at the University of Bejaia, Algeria, and a Doctorate degree in Theoretical Physics from the same University. He worked as an Assistant Professor of Physics and Mathematics at the University of Bejaia before joining Champlain College and Bishop’s University in 2014.

Dr. Anca Nedelcescu

Adjunct Professor

After completing the BSc and MSc both in Physics, at the West University of Timisoara, Romania, Dr. Nedelcescu earned a MSc in Physics (2003) at Sherbrooke University, studying the radiation hardness of gallium nitride (GaN), and then a PhD in Physics (2006), at the West University of Timisoara, studying the properties of the double hetero-structured LEDs based on GaN. In 2009 she completed a PhD in Chemical Engineering, Sherbrooke University in the domain of the experimental lab plasmas. The link between her research studies is the optical spectroscopy. In 2013 Dr. Nedelcescu became an associated member of the Plasma Quebec Group and she initiated a research axis in the domain of the experimental lab plasmas, beginning with the creation of a lab plasma source. The first results involving also undergraduate physics students were presented at the 2014 – Annual Colloquium of Plasma Quebec.

Dr. Sylvain Turcotte

Adjunct Professor

Dr. Turcotte completed his BSc in physics in 1988 at the Universite de Montreal, and later received his MSc and PhD (1997) from the same institution. For his doctoral research, Sylvain worked with Dr. Georges Michaud on the diffusion of metals in stellar atmospheres. Before arriving at Bishop’s in 2003, Sylvain was a postdoctoral fellow at the Theoretical Astrophysics Center (Denmark), the CEA-Saclay (France) and Lawrence Livermore Labs where he worked on the structure of 3-D hydrodynamic models of stars. He has currently been using the FLASH (nuclear-hydrodynamic) computer code to model the effects of the explosion of white dwarfs on their companion stars (Type Ia Supernovae).