Prof. Urbach is Professor of Physics, Interdisciplinary Chair in Science, and Vice Provost for Research at Georgetown. He completed his B.A. in Physics at Amherst College, his Ph.D. at Stanford University, and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin. He joined the Physics Department at Georgetown University as an Assistant Professor in 1996. He served as chair of the Physics Department in 2000-01, 2004-07 and from 2016 to 2020, as the co-Director of the Program on Science in the Public Interest from its founding until 2011, and the Director of the Institute for Soft Matter Synthesis and Metrology from its founding in 2011 until 2015. In 2009-10, he served as a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the Department of Energy. Prof. Urbach’s research interests include complex dynamics and biophysics. He has received a Sloan Foundation fellowship and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and research funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, NASA, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, NIST, the Petroleum Research Foundation, the Research Corporation, and the Whitaker Foundation, and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Prof. Urbach and his collaborators study complex dynamics in a variety of systems, ranging from shear thickening fluids to shaking sand to cytoskeletal proteins to migrating neurons. Using the techniques of statistical physics and nonlinear dynamics, together with advanced imaging techniques, image processing, and computer simulations, they are trying to develop quantitative, testable descriptions of multifaceted, interacting, ever changing systems that might at first glance seem like a complicated mess. For more specifics, see his Publications or his Physics Department webpage .
Academic Appointment(s)
- Primary
- Professor, College - Department of Physics
- Secondary
- Vice Provost for Research, Provost