ILP Advisory Committee
The Advisory Committee
The Advisory Committee is a standing committee of volunteers who provide advice and expertise for the operation of the Industrial Leadership in Physics program. They provide input into the program and act as a Industrial Mentors to our ILP students.
Kristen Bloschock
Kristen is a Senior Portfolio Manager within the Digital Enterprise Customer group at Capital One. In this role, she manages collaborative initiatives that are crosscutting between the lines of business and enterprise teams. Prior to joining Capital One, she was a Manager in the Digital Transformation Office at Lockheed Martin, where she led a team of subject matter experts from across the enterprise to set the strategy for digital materials engineering technologies. She also managed the corporation’s program with the materials-focused institutes within Manufacturing USA, a public-private partnership focused on manufacturing research.
In addition to her work at Lockheed Martin, Kristen serves on the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Washington Chapter of the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on STEM education. She also serves on the Advisory Board for the Industrial Leadership in Physics Ph.D. Program at Georgetown University.
Kristen received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from the University of Notre Dame, and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in physics from Georgetown University.
Tom Clinton
Tom Clinton is a device physicist and manager of an R&D group working on advanced head technologies in the storage industry. He began his industrial career in 1999 at Seagate Technology’s research center in Pittsburgh, PA, where he was a part of the team developing Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR), which integrates optical and plasmonic devices with magnetic recording. In 2010, he joined HGST’s research division, working on HAMR fabrication, and he continues that work as part of the development organization at Western Digital (WD). WD is the World’s leading storage provider, and parent company of HGST and SanDisk. He holds a doctorate in experimental condensed-matter physics from the University of Maryland, and received his bachelor degrees in physics, math, and electrical engineering from Georgetown and Catholic University. He has more than 50 scientific publications, holds 28 issued patents, and has been an invited lecturer and speaker at more than twenty conferences, universities and laboratories.
Bill Graver
Dr. Bill Graver is a Chief Scientist at Leidos Corporation- a spinoff of Science Applications International Corporation, where he created and conducted applied research programs in advanced technology as Vice President for development. His technical experience spans measurement analyses and synthetic modeling of sources, optical lasers, synthetic radio frequency and electromagnetics, spectral imaging, material characterization and fiber communications, systems architecture design and risk analyses. He actively promotes non-profit and corporate sponsorship of STEM competitions at high school, state and international science fair levels.
Jack Jachmann
Since 2009, Jack Jachmann has been CEO of DRFP, a materials science company that has developed a new polymer for dental and medical applications that has disruptive potential. The company currently operates in the UK and will enter the US market this year. He has previously worked as CEO of Cyalume Technologies and COO of Xerox Engineering Systems and was CEO and Co-Founder of Zen Research Ltd. He attended college at the City University of New York and graduate school at Columbia University.
Barbara Jones
Dr. Barbara Jones leads the theoretical and computational physics project at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California. She received an A.B. degree in physics from Harvard University in 1982, followed by a year at Cambridge as a Churchill Scholar. She earned M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from Cornell University in 1985 and 1988, respectively. After postdoctoral research at Harvard University, she joined IBM at the Almaden Research Center in 1989. She has worked on a range of projects both fundamental and more applied, including managing experimentalists working on media and read heads, to theories of quantum wells and other effects in magnetic multilayers. Currently she leads research to calculate the effects of magnetic atoms, in clusters or nanolattices, on metallic/insulating surfaces, as engineered and measured by STM. Among other distinctions, Dr. Jones was the 2001 recipient of a TWIN Award (Tribute to Women in Industry) and is currently Chair of the Division of Condensed Matter Physics of the APS, the Chair and Founder of the APS/IBM Research Internship for Undergraduate Women, past member and Chair of the American Physical Society (APS)’s Committee on the Status of Women in Physics (1999-2002), and past chair of the IBM Almaden Diversity Council. She is strongly interested in promoting opportunities in science and math for all students.
Andrew Monica
Dr. Andrew H. Monica of the JHU Applied Physics Laboratory is an experimental physicist specializing in micro- and nanostructured materials. After receiving his Ph.D. from Georgetown University’s ILP program in 2008, Dr. Monica joined the JHU-APL as a post-doctoral fellow and ultimately accepted a senior staff position in 2010. He has been with the APL ever since. During nearly a decade of work at APL, Dr. Monica has been involved in a multitude of different projects spanning a wide range of technical areas, including: IC delayering / reverse engineering, MEMS devices, photon emission microscopy, and biometrics. He also has extensive experience growing and patterning carbon nanomaterials (nanotubes and graphene); developing electron guns / ionization sources for space and terrestrial instrumentation; and significant knowledge of semiconductor processing techniques. In addition, he has served in numerous technical leadership roles for both internal R&D as well as externally funded efforts and has been the recipient of the Hart prize, awarded for excellence in research and development, on two occasions. Dr. Monica enjoys golfing in his spare time and lives in Potomac, MD with his wife Andrea and children Aidan and Isla.
John Ongman
John Ongman founded Cardinal Crest Solutions after more than three decades as a lawyer and partner, practice group head, or Washington-office managing partner in international and national (Sidley Austin; Pepper Hamilton), regional (Barnes & Thornburg), and boutique (Axinn Veltrop) law firms. When at law firms, Ongman solved regulatory, antitrust and intellectual property problems. To do this, he drew on his education in engineering (Purdue, General Motors Scholar (best student in Engineering College)), physics (Illinois – Urbana, Ph.D. program) and law (Northwestern, editor of law review and Austin Scholar (top merit scholarship)). At Cardinal Crest, Ongman engages in activities where law, science and technology meet. He is an active investor in start-up companies and provides strategic advice at the law/science/technology interface for established companies drawing on his deep experience as a multidisciplinary problem solver. The path is to dig deeply into the scientific, technological, and legal aspects of major business problems to solve them in a creative way. Before entering the practice of law, Ongman was a research associate in cardiac electrophysiology, focusing on drug discovery, at Northwestern Medical School. Prior to that, he was the General Electric Fellow in the physics department at the University of Illinois researching various topics in plasma and solid state physics. Ongman has continued his interest in science by serving as an adjunct professor in the Graduate School at Georgetown University. He also serves on the Advisory Board of the Department of Physics at Georgetown.
Nancy Suski
Nancy Suski is a Deputy Program Director in the Office of the Deputy Director for S&T at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). Nancy has over 30 years’ experience in applying science and technology in the interest of national security. Nancy has expertise in analysis and implementation of technology and systems applied to national security needs, including emergency preparedness and response, explosives, and infrastructure protection. In January 2003, Nancy accepted a DHS assignment as the Division Director for Emergency Preparedness and Response (EPR) in the Science and Technology Directorate, where she established the research and development program focused on emergency preparedness and response for large scale events, including terrorism. In 2013 Nancy joined the Office of the Deputy Director for S&T focused on university academic research and education partnerships. She currently holds a joint appointment with Georgetown University as a Professor of the Practice in the Graduate School of Arts and Science and was the Executive Director of the Emergency and Disaster Management Master degree program from Jan 2013 – July 2016. Her current research interest is the nexus of climate change, emergency management and global health.
Curtis J. Zimmermann
Dr. Curtis J. Zimmermann is BASF Corporation’s Manager, Government Liaison where he facilitates interfacing with Governmental entities for growth opportunities strategic to BASF. In his current role he is responsible for identifying Governmental collaborative activities, backward integrating them into BASF’s technological & business landscape for evaluation, as well as federal and state advocacy concerning chemical and energy policy issues.
Prior to his current position, Dr. Zimmermann served as the Manager for Inorganic Pigments and Materials for the Performance Chemicals Research Division of BASF in Ludwigshafen, Germany.
Preceding his international assignment, he was the Senior Manager for New Technologies, Effect Materials in the Performance Chemicals Research Division of BASF in Tarrytown, New York. His research was focused on new product conceptualization and development, harvesting technology and intellectual property management for new decorative and functional materials. He has held a variety of technical managerial positions throughout his career and has conducted research in materials science with an emphasis on pearlescence and optical thin film materials for over 20 years.
His long-term activities in colloid chemistry have enabled him to provide educational forums and in-depth technical courses in the arena of fine particle technology. He has numerous patents covering BASF commercial products in decorative industries and has authored additional technical papers and patents. Prior to joining BASF he worked in powder technology applied to military obscuration at the United States Army Aberdeen Proving Ground facility in Maryland.
Dr. Zimmermann earned a Juris Doctor from Pace Law School and is a member of the New York Bar. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Physical Chemistry from Clarkson University, New York and a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from Millersville University, Pennsylvania.
A native of New York, Dr. Zimmermann lives in the Hudson Highlands of New York with his wife and two sons.
Industrial Mentors
Mentors provide a crucial role in a student’s training. Mentor use their own discretion to interact with students. The Department will periodically contact mentors to receive an update on the mentoring arrangement and inquire about the experiences with the individual students to facilitate best practices.