Jatila van der Veen, Ph.D. Education and Public Outreach Coordinator for the Planck Mission , NASA Collaborators, Visiting Project Scientist, Lubin Experimental Cosmology Group, Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara 2225 Broida Hall, Santa Barbara, CA 93106

Greetings!
I am currently a Visiting Project Scientist at UCSB, back in my "home" in the Lubin Lab under a grant from NASA' Jet Propulsion Laboratory. As the Lead Education and Public Outreach Coordinator for the NASA collaborators on the Planck Mission I get to work with cutting edge research in Cosmology, and very cool people at JPL as well as the European Space Agency and the NASA Office of Education.

In Fall, 2009 I returned (unscathed!) from a chilly winter last year as an Assistant Professor of Science Education at Purdue University-Calumet, where I had the opportunity to work with some awesome student teachers, and where I started a collaboration with the amazingly talented Gerald Dekker and Jack Moreland at the PUC Visualization Lab . Our collaboration: To create a very cool, interactive, immersive simulation of the Planck Mission in 3D. COMING SOON TO A PLANETARIUM NEAR YOU!

I am currently collaborating with one of the most brilliant and creative people I have ever met, Professor JoAnn Kuchera-Morin Director and Designer of the AlloSphere at UCSB. Together with two of Professor Kuchera-Morin's awesome graduate students, Basak Alper and Wesley Smith, we are creating simulations of the Early Universe in the AlloSphere at UCSB.

I am proud to be a Lecturer in the UCSB College of Creative Studies' Interdisciplinary Studies Program.

My current passion is completely reforming the teaching of introductory physics, so as to start with symmetry and contemporary physics, utilizing connections with fine arts and cosmology, to make physics accessible to a more diverse population. I call such a model Aesthetic Physics Education You can read all about this in my Dissertation and see such a course in action this Winter Quarter, 2010, by going to Current Courses, listed below.

Recent Talks
	From Sound Waves to Microwaves: "Listening" to the Oldest Light of the Universe with the Planck Mission
	Listen to the original webinar at the Learning Center, National Science Teachers Association
	My talk about Planck with the 3D glasses at the dotAstronomy conference in Leiden, the Netherlands, in December, 2009.
	Art and Physics in Education, a talk given at the KITP Journal Club
	Why Teach Noether Before Newton a talk given at Purdue University, Calumet on June 20, 2008
Dissertation
	Complete Dissertation: Symmetry and Aesthetics in Introductory Physics: An Experiment in Interdisciplinary Physics and Fine Arts Education
	Chapter 0 - Preliminary Pages.
	Chapter 1 - Introduction
	Chapter 2 - Supporting Literature
	Chapter 3 - Case Studies
	Chapter 4 - The Curriculum
	Chapter 5 - Analysis of Student Comments
	Chapter 6 - Analysis of Student Work
	Chapter 7 - Analysis of Video Data
	Chapter 8 - Summary, Conclusions, Recommendations
	References
Links to Papers
	Planck Visualization Project: Seeing and Hearing the CMB
	The Role of Narratives in the Co-Construction of Community Identity in Physics Paper in progress
	Doing Physics, Performing Gender? A sociolinguistic approach towards understanding the persistent gender gap in physics
	Small Scale Anisotropies: The Final Frontier
	Results of 2006 Dance and Physics Questionnaire
Links to Curricula
	Pardon me, this section is under construction!

Current Courses for Winter Quarter, 2010

CCS-120, Section 1: Symmetry and Aesthetics in Contemporary Physics

Other Links of Interest

Send me a tweet on twitter!

Clowning around with my 3-D Planck glasses at dotAstronomy-2009!

UCSB Experimental Cosmology Page

Planck Mission Home Page

Link to my personal Dance Page

I am a member of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists

I am a member (since 1989!) of the American Association of Physics Teachers

I had the honor of being one of two winners of the contest to name the Chandra X-Ray Observatory

Watch a video of my dance ensemble on YouTube:

In Memoriam: My Beloved "Prince" Mischa I adopted Mischa from German Sheppherd Rescue of Burbank, CA on March 8, 2003 He left this world peacefully on June 25, 2008. You can click on the link to make a donation.

~*~ This page was last updated January 13, 2010 ~*~