Gary Burdick
Title: Professor of Physics
Office Location: Haughey Hall 222
E-mail: gburdick@andrews.edu
Phone: (269) 471-3501
Education:
BS, Southern Adventist University
PhD, University of Texas at Austin
Biography:
Gary Burdick is professor of physics. He joined the physics faculty in 1999 and was appointed Assistant Dean for Graduate Programs in the College of Arts and Sciences in 2007.
Born in St. Joseph, Michigan, Burdick graduated from Southern Adventist University in 1985 with a bachelor of science in physics and mathematics. In 1991, he received his doctorate in physics from the University of Texas at Austin. His doctoral dissertation is entitled: Third Order Contributions to Spin-Forbidden Rare Earth Optical Transition Intensities.
Prior to coming to Andrews, Burdick served as assistant professor of physics for La Sierra University, La Sierra, Calif.
Burdick is a member of the American Physical Society, the American Association of Physics Teachers, the Association of Adventist Physicists, and Sigma Xi Research Society.
He has engaged in extensive travel for presentation on his research in physics. He has presented in such places as Belgium, France, Finland, and Australia.
He is married to Aurora Burdick. They have two sons, Adrian and Emanuel.
Current Research or Professional Activities:
THEORETICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL OPTICAL SPECTROSCOPY
The unique optical properties of the lanthanide elements in solid state media have found a wide array of important technological uses in the past few years, with much current research progressing in diverse areas such as laser cooling, self-doubling and summing lasers, and the development of new luminescent materials that will be required for mercury-free fluorescent lamps and plasma displays. The work done here develops new methods of calculating and interpreting measured crystal-field energy levels and transition intensities in solid state media--the spectroscopic data necessary for the development of next-generation optical devices incorporating lanthanide elements.