KEVIN DAVENPORT

I am an Assistant Lecture Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. My experimental work revolves around gaining an understanding of the electrical transport properties of materials, such as organic semiconductors. These materials are of extreme interest in creating the next generation of electronic displays, lighting, photovoltaic cells, and printable, flexible circuits. To probe these materials, I use a technique known as noise spectroscopy in which I use the seemingly random fluctuations in device current to map onto the physical processes that generate those fluctuations. I am also interested in superconductivity in 1-dimensional nanowire structures, a key line of research necessary for applications such as ultra-sensitive photon detectors and quantum computing. Additionally, I am very interested in teaching science and scientific outreach, specifically studying the sensemaking method implimented by both students and teaching staff in our introductory physics labs where there is often a gap between the graduate teaching assistants and the non-physics-major students.  I am currently a member of CISER, the Collaborative for Interdisciplinary Science Education Research, a group devoted to improving student learning through rigorous research leading to reformed cirriculum, instruction, and support structures.

 
Currently, I am responsible for developing and facilitating the calculus and non-calculus based introductory physics series, as well as the non-calculus-based physics labs, for the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

I am also heavily involved in the training of our department's teaching assistants as well as in the overall teaching excellence of physics instruction. I am a STEM Ambassador for the University of Utah through a project begun by Dr. Nalini Nadkarni in the Department of Biology. I am also a Science Communication Fellow at the Natural History Museum of Utah. In both programs, I worked to develop effective techniques to communicate science to the public. I am also a 2018 AAAS Mass Media Fellow, a program from the American Association for the Advancement of Science designed to put scientists into the media to communicate science. Over the summer of 2018, I worked as a science correspondent at the Idaho Statesman newspaper in Boise where I reported on all sorts of interesting scientific topics. I have participated in the INSPIRE program, wherein scientists go into local jails and prisons to lecture on science to the incarcerated to further their understanding of the world and give them a connection to it.