Rate My Professor Kris Roberts

Roberts previously conducted research as a student in the Department of Physics at the University of Otago. In 2013, he completed his honours project entitled 'Construction and Characterization of a Steerable Optical Tweezer System' under the supervision of Niels Kjærgaard in the Light & Matter lab. This project developed a laser-based system capable of steering and manipulating ultracold atom clouds in three dimensions. The optical tweezers unit constructed during his honours work was utilized in subsequent experiments, including the splitting and colliding of ultracold rubidium atom clouds at temperatures near absolute zero and studies of quantum mechanical effects in particle scattering. He is acknowledged for technical assistance and acquiring absorption images in peer-reviewed publications such as 'Optical runaway evaporation for the parallel production of multiple Bose-Einstein condensates' (Physical Review A, 2014) and 'Effects of quantum mechanical identity in particle scattering: experimental observations and lack thereof' (Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 2021). Roberts was also a member of the group in the Department of Physics and participated in the Otago Optics Chapter.