Chris Orban

Prof. Chris Orban is a computational physicist and education researcher with a background in cosmological N-body simulations and ultra-intense laser science. He leads the STEMcoding project http://u.osu.edu/stemcoding which is an initiative to develop simple coding activities and coding tutorial videos for high school science and math. The STEMcoding project youtube channel http://go.osu.edu/STEMtube is where these videos can be found, and importantly they feature a high percentage of underrepresented groups in STEM in order to reflect the reality that all different kinds of people go into STEM careers.

Prof. Orban also co-leads the BuckeyeVR project (http://buckeyevr.osu.edu) which is an effort to develop free smartphone-based VR resources for physics, math and engineering. The BuckeyeVR project also conducts large studies on the effectiveness of VR in introductory courses. Their recent paper on "A controlled study of stereoscopic virtual reality in freshman electrostatics" (https://www.compadre.org/per/items/detail.cfm?ID=14650) is currently the largest-ever study of the effectiveness of VR in STEM with over 600 students involved in the study. Additional data from another 500 students are being used for a follow-up publication.

Chris is also a member of the Partnership to Integrate Computation into Undergraduate Physics (PICUP) which is an initiative of the American Association of Physics Teachers.