Physics Professor Daniel Koon enjoys both the fact and the fiction of science.  He has taught every course available in the physics major, both lecture and laboratory courses.  He also ventures out of the specific realm of physics to teach First-Year Program courses that focus on science fiction.  The course titled “To Boldly Go” allowed students to learn about “the science and fiction of space travel, time travel and extraterrestrials, and global science fiction,” he explains.

Prof. Koon, who earned his master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Rochester, was recently invited to give a lecture at a science fiction workshop in Havana, Cuba.  “La CF Global y el Proyecto SETI (La Búsqueda de Imaginación Extraterritorial)" ["Global Science Fiction and the SETI Project (The Search for Extraterritorial Imagination)"] was presented to the Espacio Abierto science fiction and fantasy writers' workshop in April 2010.

When Koon was in Cuba he conducted research on the history of science fiction during the so-called "Special Period," and how writers dealt with a scarcity of Siberian forest paper pulp and East German ink that made traditional publishing impossible.  Other areas of scholarship and research include charge transport in metal-hydrogen systems; error analysis in van der Pauw resistivity; and Hall measurement.

In his free time Koon’s hobbies include signing in the University Chorus, researching family history, and studying foreign languages and translation.