Lina Merchan Alvarez

Biography

I am originally from Colombia. I came to the US to do a PhD in Physics at Georgia Tech. My PhD research was a supercomputer molecular dynamic simulation of lubricants compressed down to a nanometers wide gap. After finishing my PhD in January 2012, I did a postdoc in the Physics Department at Emory University on System Biology where we used Math and Physics to study biological Systems, in particular how information is stored in a network, and how cell receptor activation can be modeled as a Markov chain. From there I transfer to the Math/CS Department of Emory for a second postdoc to program GPU to improve the software used in Breast Cancer diagnostic Tomosynthesis. My third postdoc at Emory was with our collaborator in the Winship Cancer Institute where I learned how to use the Tomosynthesis and breast CT machines. I started in Savannah State University as Assistant Professor of Physics in the Department of Engineering technology on August 2015. I have four children, ages from 1 to 10 years old. I love teaching and interacting with my students. I have experience programming in multiple languages and love to see how physics can help us understand our world.

Research Interest

Breast cancer diagnostics, at the computational, theoretical and epidemiological level. Absorption and Emission of light by plants. Using X-Rays to study plant development.