Faculty Directory

EDUCATION

• Ph.D., Physics, Rutgers University, 2009
• B.S., Physics, Rutgers University, 1997

HONORS AND AWARDS

• UMD 2026 Research Excellence Exemplary Honoree
• DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) Director's Fellowship Award 2024 
• DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) 2022
• 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (awarded to members of CMS)
• Board of Directors, National Museum of Nuclear Science & History  (2020 - present)
• Richard J. Plano Dissertation Award, Best Annual Rutgers Physics Ph.D. (April 2010)

RECOGNITION

• Terp Magazine, “Keeper of the Codes,” May 20, 2026

• WIRED  The Low-Stakes Race to Crack an Encrypted German U-Boat Message August 27, 2023

• NPR Morning Edition Interview, “Mystery of German Uranium Cube,” August 29, 2019 

• Forbes, “The search for lost Nazi Uranium,” May 20, 2019

• Washington Post, “How Nazi Gzermany got a lot closer to building a nuclear weapon in WWII,” May 12, 2019 

• Cosmos, “Physicists-turned-sleuths hunt for WWII German Uranium,” May 7, 2019

• ScienceNews, “How Scientists traced a uranium cube to Nazi Germany’s nuclear reactor program,” May 7, 2019

• DailyMail, “Hunt for Hitler’s missing Uranium,” May 7, 2019, featuring Timothy Koeth’s German uranium history of science project.

• Washington Post Magazine, “Accelerated Learning,” Sept 11, 2016 

• Nuclear News  “ ‘New’ Fuel for University of Maryland Research Reactor” June 2017

• Department of Energy's announcement of "UMD's New Used Fuel"

• Terp Magazine, “Beam Team,” May 16, 2017

• Physics Today, featured in BackScatter column, April, 2011

• symmetrybreaking article on the “Physics of Scotch Tape,” January 2011

• symmetry magazine article on the "DIY Cyclotron," August 2010, featured Small Cyclotron Conference

• Make Magazine article, April 2005, reporting on personally built cyclotron

• Physics Today "Building a Cyclotron on a Shoestring" November 2004, featured personally built cyclotron

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UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

• ENMA427 Materials at the Extremes     

  Offered: S2026 (and every spring semester go forward)

  Description: This course will provide a study into materials in extreme environments through lectures, detailed real-life case studies and demonstrations. The main objective of this course is to apply your knowledge of materials science and the role it plays in combating the failure modes caused by extreme environments. This course is designed to guide students through an understanding of what defines an extreme environment and how materials are being designed to address these conditions.

  After it's inaugural offering S2026 the student and faculty response was overwhelming!  As a result, I will be offering it every spring semester.  

  

  The following image is perhaps my most favorite from our S2026 class.  This is a single frame from a 40,000 frame per second camera capturing the instant when a 2.7 gram ping pong ball strikes a water balloon at Mach 2!  

  

• ENMA300 Introduction to Materials Science & Engineering     

  Offered: F2025, F2022, S2022, F2021

  Description: Structure of materials, chemical composition, phase transformations, corrosion and mechanical properties of metals, ceramics, polymers and related materials. Materials selection in engineering applications.

• ENMA486 Seminar in Materials Science & Engineering  

  Offered: S2025, F2024, F2020, S2020

  Description: Current research in materials science and engineering and related fields. The lectures are presented by scientists and engineers from academia, national laboratory, US government, etc., in the format of seminars.

• ENMA688 Graduate Seminar in Materials Science & Engineering

  Offered: S2025, F2024, S2020, F2020

  Description: Current research in materials science and engineering and related fields. The lectures are presented by scientists and engineers from academia, national laboratory, US government, etc., in the format of seminars.

• ENMA499 Senior Laboratory Project    

  Offered: S2025, F2021

  Description: This course provides an opportunity for independent self-guided materials research.  Students will answer a materials science question that they propose, establishing a previously unknown connection between at least two of the following four aspects of materials: processing, structure, properties, and performance. Projects may alternatively propose novel innovations in one of these aspects, such as a rigorous search for a new structure or a never-before-seen property.

• ENMA698 Special Problems in Materials Science & Engineering               

  Offered: S2025, S2022

  Description: This course is an opportunity for independent scholarly research in Materials Science and Engineering in a one-on-one setting with Prof. Koeth as the research mentor. This course includes clearly defined research project with intermediate milestones, culminating in a scholarly research paper.

• ENMA490 Materials Design (MSE Capstone)

  Offered: S2023

  Description: Capstone design course. Students work in teams on projects evaluating a society or industry-based materials problem and then design and evaluate a strategy to minimize or eliminate the problem; includes written and oral presentations.

• ENEE408T/PHYS499T/ENMA489T Accelerator Physics Capstone Design Project – Building 5 MeV Cyclotron 

  Offered: S2020, S2019, S2018, S2017, S2017

  Description: Cyclotrons are versatile accelerators whose use, because of an unsurpassed economic footprint, continues to expand in basicresearch, industry, medicine, and education. They also capture most of fundamental physics and technology of even the biggest particle accelerators, such as CERN’s LHC. This course provides students with a hands-on introduction to fundamental beam physics as well as the technology of cyclotrons, their design, commissioning, and operation. Students of this course will be designing and building a cyclotron. The level is intended for senior undergraduate and junior graduate students in electrical engineering and physics. Lectures will cover theoretical and practical aspects of cyclotrons, their design, and operation, including magnetic resonance [cyclotron] acceleration, ion sources, weak and azimuthally varying field (AVF) beam focusing, and beam extraction methods. We will cover relevant technology of cyclotron radio frequency and vacuum systems as well as discuss phenomena that limit energy and intensity, such as resonances and space charge. Generations of UMD student led teams will uniquely guide the design and oversee the construction of the UMD 19-Inch Educational Cyclotron.

• ENMA422 Radiation Effects of Materials

  Offered: F2017

  Description: In this class we start with the fundamental types of ionizing radiation. We then begin to understand radiation’s interaction with matter through radiation measurement devices, such as dosimeter and detectors. We then explore radiation processing, radiation damage effects in various media. We understand Radiation Chemistry, materials for radioactive waste, and finish with a survey of applications of radiation: medical, power, and security related topics.

• ENME432 Reactor and Radiation Measurements.   

  Offered: F2018, F2017, S2017, F2016, S2016, F2015

  Description: Basics concepts of nuclear radiation and radiation detectors including types of radiation, radioactive decay, and interactions of radiation with matter. The major objective of ENME 432 is to teach students the measurements required to characterize radiation emitted from active nuclear materials. Emphasis is placed on laboratory measurements using modern radiation detectors and processing electronics and analysis software. Understanding the principles of nuclear radiation and detector technology underlying measurements and the critical thinking skills necessary to effectively assess experimental results is emphasized.

• PHYS299/399/499 Special Problems in Physics      

  Offered: F2023, S2023, F2020, F2020, S2020, S2020, S2018, F2015, Summer1 2015, Summer2 2015

  Description:  This course is an opportunity for independent scholarly research in physics in a one-on-one setting with Prof. Koeth as the research mentor. This course includes clearly defined research project with intermediate milestones, culminating in a scholarly research paper.

UNITED STATES PARTICLE ACCELERATOR SCHOOL (USPAS)

• Cyclotron Design, USPAS Winter 2017, UC Davis, 1.5cr (graduate level)
• Cyclotron Design, Operation, and Measurement, USPAS Summer 2015, Rutgers University, 3cr (graduate level)
• Cyclotron Design, USPAS Winter 2013, Duke University, 1.5cr (graduate level)
• Fundamentals of Accelerator Physics, USPAS Summer 2011, Stony Brook, 2011
• Radiation & Matter in Accelerator Environments – Summer 2019