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Kapale: 2019 WIU Distinguished Faculty Lecturer

February 26, 2019

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MACOMB/MOLINE, IL – The Western Illinois University 2019 Distinguished Faculty Lecturer Kishor Kapale will present "A Stroll Through the Intriguing Quantum World" at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 20 in the College of Fine Arts and Communication (COFAC) Recital Hall (Macomb) and at 3 p.m. Wednesday, April 3 at the WIU-QC Riverfront Campus, room 103-104 (Moline). The lecture is open free to the public.

According to Kapale, interim chair of the WIU Department of Physics, his lecture will offer the audience a virtual tour of the counterintuitive, yet amazing, quantum world.

"I will discuss how we have come to develop an understanding of the quantum world, and how it has led to some of the technologies we use today and the dream-filled path that lies ahead that may one day lead to a quantum computer," Kapale added.

Kapale joined Western's physics faculty in 2007 as an assistant professor. He was promoted to full professor in 2016. Kapale serves as the physics department graduate coordinator and co-founder of the WIU Graduate Research Conference. He has been awarded the WIU College of Arts and Sciences Community Service Award, the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Research's Best in Track Award, the WIU Professional Achievement Award eight times, and has received a WIU Grant Writing Fellowship Award and the College of Arts and Science Faculty Mentor Research Award.

He has served as a research adviser for 17 WIU graduate students and seven undergraduate students, which resulted in 50 student presentations at local, regional, national and international conferences. Kapale has also served as a referee for such international journals as Physical Review Letters, Journal of Physics (B), Journal of the Optical Society of America and Journal of Modern Optics. In addition, he has had his research, "Lasing Without Inversion: Counterintuitive Population Dynamics in the Transient Regime," published in the prestigious Physical Review Letters (PRL), and he has nearly 45 publications to his credit that enjoy close to 1350 citations, according to Google Scholar.

Kapale has served on numerous University committees and has organized numerous events for the community, including sky-viewing events and astronomy courses. He also serves as the adviser and manager for the award-winning Macomb Bots 4-H robotics club team. Kapale also manages and coaches the FIRST Lego Robotics teams for local elementary school children.

He earned his doctorate in theoretical quantum optics from Texas A & M, his master's degree in physics from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay and his bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Bombay.

Posted By: University Communications (U-Communications@wiu.edu)
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