Leigh Smith has been a professor of Physics at the University of Cincinnati since 1990.  He was born in Staunton, Virginia on December 16, 1959, and grew up in Chesterton, Indiana before graduating from the University of Virginia in Mathematics and Physics in 1982.  He attented graduate school in Physics at Princeton University during 1982-1983, and then at the University of Illinois from 1983-1988.  He received his PhD in Physics from the University of Illinois in 1988.  He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at IBM T.J. Watson Research Laboratories from 1988-1990, before becoming a faculty member in the Department of Physics at the University of Cincinnati in 1990.  He married to Elizabeth C. Fisher-Smith in 1984 and has two sons, Hugh and Christian who study Theatre and Percussion Performance, respectively.

My main areas of interest lie in the physics of electronic states in semiconductor nanostructures:  cofinement potentials, wavefunctions, many body effects, and interactions with phonons, photons, or impurities.  A general theme of my research is to combine:

(a)    ultrahigh spectral resolution: to determine the energetics of these states with micro-eV precision. 

(b)  sub-micron spatial resolution: to isolate single quantum confined states, or measure the transport properties of neutral particles.

(c)   picosecond temporal resolution: to measure the dynamics of interactions between these various states.

to achieve a more complete picture of these electronic states and their interactions.  In particular, my research publications can be divided into several areas:  (1) semiconductor nanowire heterostructures, (2) quantum dots and their excitons, (3) exciton spins and magnetic impurities, (4) exciton transport and interactions with spins or phonons, (5) many-body effects in semiconductors.

In addition, I have an intense interest in the use of technology for classroom learning and have extensive experience in online and flipped classroom techniques.