Two Residents Receive NJIT Professor Promotions

Andrei Sirenko, Ph.D, of Basking Ridge, formerly associate professor in the department of physics, was on Wednesday promoted to professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology's annual University Convocation.

Laramie Potts of Basking Ridge, an assistant professor in the department of engineering technology in NJIT’s Newark College of Engineering, also was selected to be promoted to associate professor with tenure at the University Convocation, an annual celebration to honor faculty and staff members who have "demonstrated the highest level of excellence over a sustained period," according to a news release from NJIT, the state's science and technology university.

“Andrei and his research team have been developing novel approaches, using optical techniques, to characterize a new class of materials known as meta materials,” said N.M. Ravindra, chairman of the NJIT department of physics. “These artificial materials have enormous applications including those in antennas, sensor detection, remote aerospace and energy management.”

Sirenko works in the field of optics and condensed matter physics, the news release said. He uses synchrotron radiation at Brookhaven National Lab for his research. Recently, his group built a far-infrared ellipsometer to probe magnetic excitations in complex oxide materials.  Sirenko’s research receives support from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.   

Sirenko joined NJIT in 2003 as an assistant professor, the release said. While at the university, he was promoted to associate professor in 2007, and granted tenure in 2008.

Sirenko is described as a very active researcher, with 64 published journal papers, 16 conference papers, and 995 citations as of September 2010. His research involves application of spectroscopy in optics, condensed matter physics, and device materials physics.  His areas of expertise include raman spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy, hard x-ray synchrotron, and optical ellipsometry. 

Experts and colleagues in Sirenko’s field have noted that the NJIT professor has “broad and outstanding knowledge in experimental physics and in particular optical spectroscopy” and that he is “one of the rare experimentalists who are capable of developing new techniques, such as far-infrared ellipsometry, and of applying these to really interesting novel materials, such as the multiferroic oxides and quantum-well structures.” 

The university, in advancing the honor, said Sirenko’s teaching evaluations are consistently superb, and he has developed two new physics courses for the department, one undergraduate and one graduate.

He has served as an enrollment advisor, on search committees, a peer reviewer, and as one of just two external representatives on the CHESS User Committee.

The other township resident to be honored and promoted, Potts, is involved in an on-going investigation of the “total electron content” variations over the northern ionospheric trough from dual-frequency GPS (global positioning system) observations, according to the release.

Installation of a dual-frequency GPS receiver at the Jenny Jump experimental station in western New Jersey and observations from other reference stations provide the data for this investigation, according to the university.

Potts also hosted a visiting scholar from Turkey, launched a new course in marine surveying and has been collaborating with faculty of Atlantic Cape Community College (ACCC) to develop a curriculum. In the two courses he developed and taught there, students used handheld GPS devices and web-based mapping to develop a digital map of the campus.

Potts has published 19 peer-reviewed journal papers and 31 conference abstracts. He has been principal investigator or co-PI on five grants totaling over $600,000 and has been active in grant submission to the National Science Foundation.

An outside reviewer notes that, “his focus on geodesy, geophysics, space weather, geographic information systems, student learning, and vocational trajectories in engineering technology is wide ranging and commendable.”  

Potts has been a program coordinator for the SET program, the only one of its kind in New Jersey, and has developed several new elective courses for his department.  He serves as the faculty advisor for Tau Alpha Pi, and also has served on several NJIT committees.  For more about Potts, visit http://engineeringtech.njit.edu/people/potts.php.

Broadcaster, author and motivational speaker Steve Adubato will speak at the event. A university lecturer, Emmy Award-winning television anchor, and Star-Ledger columnist, Adubato also served in the mid-1980s as New Jersey's youngest state legislator at age 26.