My Research Interests

I love physics, and earned a minor in physics as an undergraduate. Studying applied math has allowed me to stand on the border between math and physics -and I love it here because I have a passport between disciplines. It allows me to study multiple subjects and cross borders between not only math and physics, but also biology, chemistry, engineering, computer science – it’s fantastic!

My PhD advisor, Arnold Kim, and I are currently working on problems studying light propagation in biological tissues governed by the Radiative Transport Equation. We model backscattered light from layered tissue composed of a slab on a semi-infinite half space. Our current work utilizes the corrected diffusion approximation which applies a boundary layer solution to the standard diffusion approximation and has shown significant improvement in data close to the source. This means that I currently am able to combine my interests in math, physics, and biology for the purposes of our research.

Journal Publications

1. S. B. Rohde and A. D. Kim, “Backscattering of continuous and pulsed beams” SIAM Multiscale Modeling and Simulation, 15(4), 1356-1375.

2. S.B. Rohde, “Modeling diffuse reflectance measurements of light scattered by layered tissues,” PhD thesis, University of California, Merced (2014). 81 pages; 3627669.

3. S. B. Rohde and A. D. Kim, “Modeling the diffuse reflectance due to a narrow beam incident on a turbid medium,” J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 29, 231-238 (2012).

4. S. B. Rohde and A. D. Kim, “A convolution model of the diffuse reflectance for layered tissues,” Opt. Lett. 39, 154-157 (2014).

For other publications and presentations, please see my CV

For fun, here’s a comic by xkcd: