Carl Wieman Portrait
Senior Advisor to PhET • Nobel Laureate - 2001
Physics

Office: DUAN F1029

Research Interests:

Carl Wieman is currently the director of the Science Education Initiative at the University of Colorado and a similar program at the University of British Columbia. These collaborative initiatives are aimed at achieving highly effective, evidence-based science education for all post-secondary students by applying the latest advances in pedagogical and organizational excellence. These efforts support work at the departmental level to achieve sustained widespread improvement in learning, based around establishing what students learn, determining what students are actually learning, and improving student learning. Dr. Wieman also carries out research in physics and chemistry education, particularly focusing on a) the use of interactive simulations and b) student beliefs about science and their relationship to instruction and student outcomes. He is the founder of the Physics Education Technology Project (PhET), and is currently serving as a senior advisor to the project. His research group also developed survey instruments (CLASS-Physics and CLASS-chem) for measuring student beliefs.

Selected Publications:

  1. Donley, Elizabeth A.; Neil R. Claussen; Simon L. Cornish; Jacob L. Roberts; Eric A. Cornell; Carl E. Wieman (2001-07-19)."Dynamics of Collapsing and Exploding Bose−Einstein Condensates"Nature 412 (6844): 295–299.
  2. Walker, Thad; David Sesko and Carl Wieman (1990). "Collective Behavior of Optically Trapped Neutral Atoms". Phys. Rev. Lett. 64(4): 408–411.
  3. Tanner, Carol E.; Carl Wieman (1988). "Precision Measurement of the Hyperfine Structure of the 133Cs 6P3/2 State". Phys. Rev. A38 (3): 1616–1617. doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.38.1616