Rodney Yoder, Ph.D.

Dr. Rodney Yoder is Associate Professor of Physics and Chair of the Physics Department. Prof. Yoder joined Manhattanville in 2007; he is an experimental physicist with special interest in electromagnetism, but teaches throughout the physics major curriculum. He has a special interest in making physics principles accessible to non-scientists in his general education courses, such as “Sound and Music” and “How Things Work.” His research currently includes the development of miniaturized electron-beam accelerators and radiation sources.

Prof. Yoder received his B.A. in Physics from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and his Ph.D. from Yale University, where he specialized in the physics of particle beams and acceleration, including electromagnetic theory, numerical modeling, and experimental design. For his dissertation, he built and operated a prototype electron accelerator using the inverse free-electron-laser mechanism, one of the first demonstrations of that principle. As a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, he contributed to several demonstrations of laser-driven acceleration, including plasma- and IFEL-based devices.

Prof. Yoder is the co-inventor of a microscopic particle accelerator: a device built of dielectric materials, powered by a laser, and smaller than the head of a match, which can serve as an accelerator or a radiation source for medical, industrial, or monitoring applications. Since 2006, Prof. Yoder has been part of a collaboration with a UCLA physicist to develop and build a prototype of this micro-accelerator; their work is funded by the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the National Nuclear Security Agency, and includes postdoctoral and graduate students at UCLA as well as undergraduates at UCLA and Manhattanville. In late 2011 they hope to demonstrate acceleration in a prototype structure for the first time.

As part of this work, Prof. Yoder and his colleagues have also been investigating candidates for microscopic beam emitters using pyroelectric crystals, which generate surface charge when heated or cooled. An experimental program in this area is ongoing.

Prof. Yoder has published his work in Physical Review Letters and Special Topics: Accelerators and Beams, and presented at national and international Particle Accelerator Conferences, the Advanced Accelerator Concepts workshops of the U.S. Department of Energy, and others. He is a member of the American Physical Society and enjoys taking students to meetings of the New York State section of the APS.