Donald Driscoll, Ph.D.

Dr. Driscoll has been with the Ashtabula Campus since 2007.  He teaches the two-semester General College Physics sequence as well as the Physics for Health Technologies class required for the Physical Therapy Assistant and Respiratory Therapy Assistant majors.  In addition, he teaches several Kent Core courses, including Seven Ideas that Shook the Universe, Frontiers in Astronomy, Physics in Entertainment and the Arts, and Physical Science.

Education:

Ph.D. in Physics from Case Western Reserve University in 2004
M.S. in Astronomy and Astrophysics from The Pennsylvania State University in 1997
B.S. in Physics/Astronomy and Mathematics from Mount Union College in 1995

Research Interests:

Dr. Driscoll's Master's Thesis was in Computational Relativity, modeling the gravitational radiation produced by the infall of a compact object like a white dwarf into a massive black hole. For his Ph.D., he worked on the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) , an experiment designed to detect a kind of dark matter called a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle, or WIMP.

After graduation, Dr. Driscoll worked as a postdoc on the Solar Tower Atmospheric Cherenkov Effect Experiment (STACEE), a gamma-ray telescope which was located in Albuquerque, NM.

Scholarly, Creative & Professional Activities:

• C. Mueller, et al., “Very high-energy observations of the two high-frequency peaked BL Lac objects 1ES 1218+304 and H 1426+428,” Astropart.Phys. 34, 674-678 (2011).
• D.S. Akerib, et al., “A Low-Threshold analysis of CDMS shallow-site data.” Phys.Rev.D 82, 122004 (2010).
• A. Jarvis, et al., “Very High-Energy Observations of Gamma-Ray Bursts with STACEE,” Astrophys.J. 722, 862-870 (2010).
• J. Zweerink, et al., “Pulsed VHE γ-ray Emission Constraints for PSR B1951+32 from STACEE Observations,” Astrophys.J. 693, 1128-1132 (2009).
• D. Hanna, et al., “OSETI with STACEE: A Search for Nanosecond Optical Transients from Nearby Stars,” Astrobio. 9(4), 345-357, (2009).
• D.D. Driscoll, et al., “Search for Dark Matter Annihilation in Draco with STACEE,” Phys.Rev.D 78, 087101 (2008).
• T.L. Lindner, et al., “Very high energy observation of the BL Lac objects 3C 66A and OJ 287,” Astropart.Phys. 28, 338 (2007).
• J.E. Carson, et al., “The Energy Spectrum of the Blazar Markarian 421 Above 130 GeV,” Astrophys.J. 662, 199 (2007).
• D.A. Williams, et al., “Very high energy follow-up observations of gamma-ray bursts,” Nuovo Cim. 121B, 1619-1621 (2006).
• D.S. Akerib et al.. “Limits on spin-independent WIMP-nucleon interactions from the two-tower run of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search”, Phys.Rev.D 73, 011102 (2006).
• D.S. Akerib et al., “Limits on spin-dependent WIMP-nucleon interactions from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search”, Phys.Rev.Lett. 96, 011302 (2006).
• D.S. Akerib et al., “Exclusion Limits on the WIMP-Nucleon Cross-Section from the First Run of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search in the Soudan Underground Lab”, Phys.Rev.D 72, 052009 (2005).
• D.S. Akerib et al., “First Results from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search in the Soudan Underground Lab”, Phys.Rev.Lett. 93, 211301 (2004).
• D.S. Akerib et al., “New Results from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search Experiment”, Phys.Rev.D 68, 082002 (2003).
• Abrams, et al. “Exclusion Limits of the WIMP-Nucleon Cross-Section from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search” Phys.Rev.D 66, 122003 (2002).
• Abusaidi, et al. “Exclusion Limits on the WIMP-Nucleon Cross-Section from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search” Phys.Rev.Lett. 84, 5699-5703 (2000).

Research Areas:

• Dark Matter
• Gamma-ray Astronomy
• Cosmic-ray Astronomy