Rona Ramos

Rona Ramos's picture
Graduate Services Coordinator; Lecturer Physics
She/her/hers
SPL 35A
203-432-3655
rona.ramos@yale.edu
Research Areas: 
Condensed Matter Physics
Research Type: 
Experimentalist
Biographical Sketch: 

Rona Ramos is a lecturer and the department’s graduate program coordinator. She focuses on the unique and human experiences of those who learn or do physics in both her roles as teacher and program coordinator. She began this work as physics faculty for the Summer Medical and Dental Education Program at Yale (now named the Summer Health Professions Education Program), a program designed to support and uplift underrepresented populations in medicine and healthcare. She has taught several introductory physics courses in the department, which have been infused with pedagogical innovations and inclusive teaching practices that open access to a broader range of students with a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives.

She co-created and teaches the course Physics 530: The Theory and Practice of Scientific Teaching, a course which aims to improve undergraduate science education by training future faculty in the practice of inclusive teaching and evidence teaching methods. She is also currently an instructor for Being Human in STEM, a course which explores the lived experiences of underrepresented identities in STEM and the barriers they face in the scientific community.

As the co-director of Girls Science Investigations, she has developed fun and engaging science activities for middle school girls that includes building robots that draw and paper circuit greeting cards. She is also the co-leader of the APS-IDEA team at Yale. As the graduate program coordinator, she focuses on supporting the growth and well being of our graduate students, and making this a welcoming and exciting program for current and future students.

Education: 
Ph.D. 2010, Yale University
Advisor: 
Sean Barrett
Dissertation Title: 
Novel Pulse Sequences Exploiting the Effects of Hard π-pulses
Dissertation Abstract: 
In magnetic resonance and other spectroscopies, the strong pulses used to control coherent spin evolution are often approximated as instantaneous delta function rotations. However, small corrections to the delta function model can cause surprising departures from the conventional theory in standard multipulse NMR experiments using strong π-pulses. In this dissertation, we report the exploration of the small correction terms resulting from the finite duration of realistic pulses, however strong, using average Hamiltonian theory. Investigation of role these terms could play in standard NMR experiments led to the design and demonstration of a new class of spin echoes. We present analogs of the original free induction decay (FID), Hahn echo, and CPMG echoes whose experimental design is based on terms typically ignored when strong pulses are used. Variants on the original magic echo are demonstrated as well as the quadratic echo, based on both the zeroth- and first-order average Hamiltonian expressions and which has no classic NMR spin echo analog. Finally, we present alternative approaches to overcoming the line broadening effect of dipolar interactions in solids. Using a variation on the quadratic echo pulse sequence as a building block, we develop a new approach to line-narrowing and magnetic resonance imaging of solids which allows control of both the Zeeman and dipolar phase wrapping.