PhD, Physics (1999) University of Wisconsin--Madison (WI)
About Me
I spent my undergraduate career in Jakarta, Indonesia, where I obtained a degree in electrical engineering from Trisakti University. I continued my graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin, majoring in physics, electrical engineering, and computer science.
At Widener, I have taught a variety of courses, ranging from introductory programming courses to algorithms, data communications, game programming, computer graphics, and high performance computing (parallel computing). Before coming to Widener, I taught at University of Wisconsin - Madison and University of Wisconsin - Whitewater
Research Interests
My research interests are in the fields of high performance computing, nanoscience and nanotechnology, magnetism, and computational physics. Basically, my passion is to use the computational power to help calculate physics phenomenon on a very small scale (e.g. nanoscale).
Publications
Rufinus, J. (2011). Ab-initio calculation of magnetic properties of Gd-doped ZnGeN2. Journal of Applied Physics, 109(7), 07C315.
Rufinus, J. (2011). Ab-Initio calculation of the basic magnetic properties of (Mn, Cr, V)-doped MgSiN2. In Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 303(1). IOP Publishing.
Rufinus, J. (2010). Ab-Initio calculations of magnetic properties of Mn-doped ZnGeN2. Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials, 322(9), 1182鈥1184.
Professional Affiliations & Memberships
American Physical Society (APS), International Association of Mathematical Physics (IAMP)
Awards
National Science Foundation Grants
NASA - Langley Research Center (Hampton, VA) Grants
Computational Grants from University of Oklahoma, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
Noteworthy
Professor of Chemical Engineering Sachin Patil and a team of student-researchers published a paper in the journal Computational Biology and Chemistry titled, 鈥淒iscovery of small-molecule PD-1/PD-L1 antagonists through combined virtual screening and experimental validation.鈥 The paper presented an integrated drug discovery approach leading to identification of a novel PD-1/PD-L1 antagonist that may serve as a starting point for further optimization into potent, small-molecule cancer immunotherapies. The team included students from Widener's chemical engineering and computer science program, as well as Computer Science Professor Jeffrey Rufinus and technician John Stoddart. Michelle DiFrancesco '18, a chemical engineering graduate, served as the student team leader and study first author. She is currently continuing her cancer immunotherapy work at Bristol-Myers Squibb, a leading global biopharmaceutical company.
