Rate My Professor Jacob Moldenhauer

Jacob Moldenhauer, PhD, is Department Chair and Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Dallas. He holds a B.A. from the University of the Ozarks, an M.S. from the University of Texas at Dallas, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Dallas. His research centers on cosmology, general relativity, higher-order gravity models, and computational tools for cosmological simulations. Moldenhauer has co-authored several influential papers, including "A New Independent Limit on the Cosmological Constant/Dark Energy from the Relativistic Bending of Light by Galaxies and Clusters of Galaxies" (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2008), with Mustapha Ishak, Wolfgang Rindler, Jason Dossett, and Chris Allison; "A minimal set of invariants as a systematic approach to higher order gravity models: Physical and Cosmological Constraints" (Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2009), with Mustapha Ishak; "Supernova, BAO, and CMB surface distance constraints on f(G) higher order gravity models" (Physical Review D, 2010), with Mustapha Ishak, John Thompson, and Damien Easson; "Testing General Relativity at Cosmological Scales: Implementation and Parameter Correlations" (Physical Review D, 2011), formerly known as ISiTGR, with Jason Dossett and Mustapha Ishak; and "Exploring the constraints on cosmological models using CosmoEJS" (Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2018), with Francis Cavanna, William O’Toole, and William Zimmerman. He has also developed educational resources such as "Modern Cosmology: Interactive Computer Simulations using Recent Observational Data Sets" (American Journal of Physics, 2013), with Larry Engelhardt, Keenan Stone, and Ezekiel Shuler, and "The Cosmic Acceleration of the Universe Lab using CosmoEJS Package" (2018).

Moldenhauer has presented invited talks and colloquia, including "Gravitational Waves, Dark Matter, Dark Energy: Recent Success and Shortcomings of General Relativity" at multiple Dallas County Community College campuses (2016, 2018, 2019), "Computational Cosmology: What can models and simulations teach us about the universe?" at the University of Texas at Dallas (2016), and "Exploring the Hubble Constant Tension with CosmoEJS" at the Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics (2019). At the University of Dallas, he directs the Center for Teaching and Learning and leads research initiatives, such as the university's first CERN project on neutron-induced reactions with potential applications in cancer treatment, in collaboration with Will Flanagan. He mentors undergraduate students, contributing to publications like the measurement of the isomeric yield ratio for thermal neutron absorption on zirconium-88 in Physical Review C (2025), with Isaac Kelly and Will Flanagan.