Fred Behroozi

Professor Fred Behroozi began his professional career as a low-temperature physicist. His early research focused on the study of superconductivity, magnetism, and mathematical modeling. He joined the UNI Physics Department in 1992, served as head of department until 2001, and retired from the department in 2011.

At UNI he established a surface laboratory and developed a miniature laser interferometer to study the properties of solid and fluid surfaces at the nanometer scale.  He devised a non-contact method for determining the surface tension and viscosity of fluids from measurement of the dispersion and attenuation of capillary waves.  The miniature interferometer was used to measure the viscoelastic properties of molecular monolayers on fluids.  In a related project he employed the interferometer to detect the nanoscale surface defects by monitoring the vibration amplitude of solid surfaces.