Lawrence Rudd

Dr. Rudd’s professional interests are in the areas of science education and geomorphology. By following these interests throughout his life, Dr. Rudd has been involved in a delightful combination of learning, researching, and teaching. Regardless of what he is teaching, Dr. Rudd never fails to use science examples and demonstrations to keep learning active. An ardent believer in inquiry-based learning, students in Dr. Rudd’s classes learn science and science teaching methods through active participation in class activities.

Dr. Rudd has wide-ranging experience in education, including 20 years of teaching high school earth science, physics, and geology in Portland, Maine, Pinon, Arizona, and Tucson, Arizona. In Pinon, Arizona Dr. Rudd taught in the first high school built in a remote part of the Navajo nation. Working with diverse student populations is one of Dr. Rudd’s lifelong interests.

In addition to teaching education classes at Nevada State College Dr. Rudd maintains an active interest in the study of landslides and other Earth surface processes and thoroughly enjoys being able to do field work in Southern Nevada and the nearby Colorado Plateau.

Elisabeth “Libby” Hausrath

Dr. Hausrath is an aqueous geochemist and astrobiologist, and the overall theme of her research program is to investigate interactions between water and minerals, and the impacts of life on those interactions. They use a combination of field work, laboratory experiments, and modeling to investigate signatures of aqueous alteration and life, the rates at which these reactions occur, and how they differ on Earth and on other planets such as Mars. Our work helps understand chemical weathering, nutrient release, the formation of soils, and biosignatures on both Earth and Mars.

Matthew Lachniet

Dr. Lachniet’s research focuses on understanding the controls on Earth’s climate on time scales ranging from seasonal to 100s of thousands years, with a particular focus on tropical and arctic past climates. These data inform understanding of modern and anthropogenic climate change. He is co-director of the Las Vegas Isotope Science (LVIS) Lab in the Science and Engineering Building. Dr. Lachniet has an active research program in which he uses light stable and radiogenic isotope geochemistry, hydrology, speleology, glacial geology, geomorphology, and the sedimentary record to answer questions of paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic change. His primary research areas are Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico, Alaska, and the Great Basin.

Vaidyanathan (Ravi) Subramanian

Ravi Subramanian is currently an associate professor of chemical engineering. He is on the graduate faculty of the Electrical and Biomedical Engineering Department and an adjunct in the Chemistry Department. He is also the solar energy thrust area coordinator in the Renewable Energy Center at the University. His area of research focus is on nanostructured materials for solar energy utilization. He has expertise in the synthesis, characterization and application of photoactive materials in photovoltaics, clean fuel production and environmental remediation. In his 12 years of research he has developed inorganic materials including semiconductor-semiconductor and semiconductor-metal nanocomposites for applications related to solar energy utilization and fuel cells.

Materials discovery and devices development to harvest solar energy continues to be a challenge. Eco-friendly and earth abundant elements have a great potential to harvest solar energy. With solar energy: your future is bright!

Robert Sheridan

Our research revolves around highly reactive organic molecules. These unstable and elusive intermediates, such as carbenes, nitrenes, and biradicals, are especially important in photochemistry, but their chemistry and properties are poorly understood. Moreover, these molecules are related to searches for organic conducting and magnetic materials. Much of the organic synthesis that we carry out involves making previously unknown compounds, and we spend a considerable amount of our time developing new synthetic methods to tackle these challenging molecules. A specialized technique that we use to study reaction intermediates involves matrix isolation photochemistry. In this method, organic molecules are frozen into glasses of inert gas at extremely low temperatures (10 Kelvin). The samples are then irradiated with UV light to generate highly reactive intermediates. The low temperatures and high dilution in inert surroundings protect these otherwise unstable species from reaction. IR and UV spectra of the samples, acquired at low temperature, tell us a great deal about the bonding and structures of the products. Finally, we carry out a variety of ab initio and DFT electronic structure calculations to model the structures, spectra, and electronics of these novel molecules.

Sajjad Ahmad

Dr. Sajjad Ahmad is an Associate Professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His research is focused on application of systems approach to understand and manage complex water and environmental systems. The goal is to provide decision support to policy makers for sustainable management resources. The water-energy nexus group is studying energy use in water and wastewater treatment plans and energy use in water distribution systems. Ahmad has also contributed to research on malaria control efforts in sub-Saharan Africa with his study of water ponds that provide breeding grounds for mosquitoes.

Steve Rowland

Dr. Stephen Rowland is an Emeritus professor in the Department of Geology. He received his Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1978. Professor Rowland’s primary studies are in the areas of paleontology, paleoecology, stratigraphy, and the history of geology. My students and I study the history of life on Earth as recorded in the fossil record, especially the paleontology of Southern Nevada and adjacent regions. Our research ranges from the earliest (late pre-Cambrian) animal fossils, to Jurassic dinosaur tracks (and those of co-existing animals) in Red Rock Canyon and Valley of Fire State Park, to Ice-Age fossils of the Tule Springs area. My history of geology research focuses primarily on the 18th century, especially in Russia.

William Arnott

Dr. Arnott develops and deploys photoacoustic instruments for measurement of black carbon emission from vehicles in source sampling, and in ambient air quality studies. These measurements are often combined with other real time particulate emission measurements for the larger purpose of establishing detailed knowledge of the conditions giving rise to most of the black carbon and particulate emission to the atmosphere, and their environmental impacts. He teaches courses in the Atmospheric Sciences Program and Physics Department at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Ganqing Jiang

Dr. Jiang received his B.A. in Engineering from Xiangtan Mining College in Hunan, south China. After graduation, he started to work on the stratigraphy and tectonics in north China and received a M.S. in Geology from China University of Geosciences (Beijing). Following graduation, he worked as a lecturer at the China University of Geosciences for five years. He continued his education at Columbia University and completed his Ph.D. in 2002. He worked as postdoctoral associate at the University of California, Riverside from 2002 to 2004. Ganqing joined the Geoscience faculty in August of 2004.