Davon Ferrara
Graduate Student, PhD Program
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Email:  davon.ferrara@vanderbilt.edu
 

"All science is either physics or stamp collecting." - Ernest Rutherford

Hi, welcome to my page.  This site is a work in progress for the time being, but I hope it give a little information about who I am and what I do.  At the moment, this site is rather bland and boring, but I am just trying to get something up for academic purposes.  I will also try to post various physics resources that I come across that might interest anyone who views this site.  My old webpage is still up at Centenary College if anyone is really interested in seeing that one (it's more creative than this one) - just follow the link.  For a more personal glimpse at who I am, please check out the personal section of this site.  There I will have pictures as well as other stuff.

The PDF form of my CV is linked here.  If you want to know what I did as an undergrad or what I'm doing now, take a look at it.

Scholarly Interests

I am currently a Research Assistant with the Applied Optical Physics group at Vanderbilt.  My interests also include high energy particle theory, but due to lack of funding and job availability, I'm hoping to "sneak in the back door" into that field by applying skills and knowledge learned in the AOP field.  We'll see how that goes...

I hope to not only be a successful researcher, but also a talented teacher and mentor to students.  With this in mind, I am developing an interest in teaching pedagogy and curriculum development relating to the sciences, and hope to pursue outreach efforts to encourage the study of sciences.  I am also very much interested in furthering my higher level mathematics education.  I would like to explore mathematical topics such as Functional Analysis and Differential Geometry.

I have had previous research experience as an undergraduate, all of which dealt with topics in the field of biophysics.  The topics included: Near Infrared Spectroscopy measurements of blood volume and oxidation in the brains of rats undergoing cardiac arrest, sensitivity of surface blood flow in the tails of rats due to changes in light, Intrinsic Optical Imaging of the brains of rats, and development of a technique to increase the sensitivity of NO gas detection.  Through this research I have gained valuable experience in programming, experiment design and implementation, data analysis, troubleshooting experiments, and machining, modifying, and repairing many kinds of scientific apparatus. 

Everything I Needed to Know in Life I Learned from Jackson Electrodynamics