Dr. Olenick currently serves as Professor of Physics and a teacher of popular courses
in physics and astronomy. He has supervised over fifty undergraduate theses. He
also served as the Associate Project Director of the PBS television series, The Mechanical Universe and Beyond the Mechanical Universe. He was also principal author of accompanying textbooks published by Cambridge University
Press. He also received numerous grants from the National Science Foundation and
the U.S. Department of Education for the development of curricular material (Comprehensive
Conceptual Curriculum for Physics, C3P) for use in high schools and for workshops for high school physics teachers.
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
Cataclysmic Variables
Accretion Disks
Exoplanet SearchesPhotometryPhysics Education
EDUCATION
M.S., PhD in Physics, Purdue University
B.S. in Physics, Illinois Institute of Technology
- Currently Editor for the deGruyter journal Open Physics
- Currently Editor for the BioAccents journal Physics
- Reviewer for the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program
- Reviewer for Open Physics project at Rice University
- Reviewer for Open Astronomy project at Rice University
- Former Committee Member and Item Writer for the Graduate Record Exam Physics Test
RECENT COURSES
- PHY 2303 Physics and Technology
- PHY 3363 Computational Physics
- PHY 2302 Introductory Astronomy
- PHY 4328 Electrodynamics
- PHY 4424 Quantum Mechanics
SELECTED PUBLICATTIONS
- "Using Remote Telescopes for Exoplanet Searches" with Arthur Sweeney, Laura Aumen, Ramses Gonzalez, Alex Henderson, Mark Rodriguez, Philip Lenzen, John Paul Jones, Proceedings of the Remote Telescopes for Research and Education Conferrence (2018).
- “Photometric Observations and Numerical Modeling of SDSS J162520.29+120308.7” with Michele Montogomery, Irina Voloshina, Kyle Meziere, and Vladimir Metlov, New Astronomy, 50, 43 (2017).
- Evolutionary Paths of AM CV’ns to Supernovae, Grant Proposal submitted 1 November 2016 to NASA, K2 Guest Observer Program Cycle with M. Montgomery and I. Voloshina.
- EWASS 2017 Session Organizer on "Undergraduate Research in Astronomy", Prague (2017).
- A Comparison of Observations and SPH Modeling of the Outbursts of the WZ Sge-Type Dwarf Nova SDSS J213806.5+261957, with I. Voloshina, M. Montgomery, J. Rovny, A. Sweeney, V. Metlov, in preparation for Astronomy and Astrophysics.
- The Superoutburst of SDSS J1625+120308 in July 2010, I. Voloshina, R. Olenick, K. Meziere, V. Metlov, J. Rovny, Proceeding of the Ninth Pacific Rim Conference on Stellar Astrophysics, Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series, Vol. 451, p. 195-199 (2011).
PRESENTATIONS
- How White Dwarfs Become Supernovae, LeTourneau University Colloquium, 27 October 2016
- Small Telescope Exoplanet Transit Searches, University of North Texas Colloquium, 17 November 2015
- STExTS—Small Telescope Extrasolar Planetary Transit Search, Colloquium at Michigan Technological University. 15 October 2015
- How White Dwarfs Evolve in Supernovae, Colloquium at Northern Michigan University, 14 September 2015