Dr. Diana Forbes, physics lecturer at Butler University, is passionate about physics education, clear scientific communication, and student success. She strives to make physics engaging, accessible, and intellectually empowering for students of all majors and backgrounds. Her courses blend structured lectures with active learning, collaborative problem-solving, and low-stakes assessments that build confidence alongside conceptual mastery. Forbes works intentionally to create a classroom environment where students feel comfortable asking questions, supported in their challenges, and encouraged to grow.
Forbes has prioritized meaningful student relationships throughout her teaching career, believing that trust and belonging are essential for learning. She is highly accessible through office hours and individualized support, and she mentors students in academic planning, research, and career development. She is especially committed to supporting students who may feel marginalized or intimidated in STEM, working to reduce barriers that have historically limited participation.
As a theoretical and computational physicist, Forbes provides extensive supplemental resources and emphasizes clarity over jargon, showing students how mathematical tools connect to physical meaning. Beyond the classroom, she is very involved in the Indianapolis community. You can find her volunteering at local churches, attending pickleball games, taking her kitten on walks in Holcomb gardens, or leading student hikes. Her teaching fosters confidence, curiosity, and long-term engagement with science, helping students see both the big picture of physics and their place within it.
Physics Lecturer (Butler University, Fall 2026 - Current)
I've been currently working at Butler University to teach lectures and lab sections related to introductory physics 1 and 2 for non-physics major students, and 300-level thermodynamcis for physics majors. This job involves all the typical expectations: Writing lectures, holding reading quizzes/exams, holding recitation, grading, running labs, mentoring, etc.
Assistant Teacher (Parkland College, Summer 2026)
I worked with Parkland College to offer online support during the teaching of summer sections of PHY 142 - Electricity and Magnetism. For this position, I provided support by monitoring an online discussion board in Cobra and providing students with insight about lecture topics, homework questions, and lab-related problems. I offered technical support to students to help them do things like take online exams, get simulations running, and access their grades. I also reviewed exam footage to check for signs of cheating and to ensure complicance with Parkland College policies.
Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy (DePauw University, Fall 2025 - Spring 2026)
At DePauw University, I worked as a physics professor to teach intro physics and modern physics lecture and lab sections. I performed all the responsibilities of a professor including leading individual research with many students, mentoring/advising, flagging struggling students and directing them to the right channels for more support, lecturing, grading, leading community-building activities outside of class to build community, etc. I was also involved immensely with the McKim observatory to lead tours and greet guests at the observatory open houses, and to work on a lantern slide digitization project to preserve historical information and make it accessible to the public in an online database. My favorite part of teaching at DePauw was my modern physics class- I loved to teach quantum mechanics and special relativity. My class of 11 students seemed very excited and engaged, and brought me little gifts like homemmade sourdough bread and letters throughout the semester. It was a ton of fun!
DePauw's physics department was special- the coursework and department was extremely experiment-focused which was new to a theorist like me. They had a lot of old and cool equipment that had been around for a very long time. I'll highlight some of these experiences in the "lab experience" tab of my website below.
Dynamical Systems
Since high school, I have been fascinated by chaotic systems. I carried around a book caleld "Chaos" by James Gleick everywhere I went for several years and read it many times. I also wanted to understand what caused attractors in phase space, how can we classify amounts of chaos, what creates fractals, and what are real-world applications of studying chaos theory. Since then, I have embarked on many computational physics projects. I've generated Poincare plots, I've simulated damped and driven oscillators, I've studied double pendulums, and many more systems. I have recently started to study this field again, you can check out myProgramming Blog!
Computational Chemistry
As a long-term goal, I would like to get more experience in the world of chemistry. I've always loved chemistry and computation, so I would like to one day gain experience in computational chemistry. Being an educator is rewarding, but I would also like to contribute in more ways than just education. I'd like to develop the skillset to contribute to health and possibly medicine down the line.
So far in chemistry, I have loved learning about: organic chem, mass spec technology, and numerically solving Schordinger's equation. It would be a dream to model atomic and molecular systems computationally and to develop the machinery of complicated n-body systems that I study with quantum mechanics or some other state-evolving theory. This may be the territory of density functional theory (DFT) so I would love to eventually join a research group or collaborate on projects/research involving these things. I'm currently just starting out at Butler, so I'm still getting my bearings and finding the best ways to go about time management so that I can one day have space in my week for chemistry research.
PhD Thesis at University of Illinois at Urbana, Champaign (May 2025):
I outlined my physics graduate research and provided additional background about the projects.
Paper: Doctoral_Thesis
Exotic Particles at the DUNE Near Detector from Charged Pion Scattering (Nov 2024):
We explored a previously overlooked channel for detecting millicharged particles via interactions with charged pions. By building a theoretical model and analyzing the expected signals, we found additional sensitivity for millicharged particle masses between 1.5 and 3 GeV.
Paper: MCP_Search
New Searches for Muonphilic Particles at Proton Beam Dump Spectrometers (June 2023):
Motivated by the muon g-2 discrepancy, I developed a model for a new particle that interacts with muons and designed a novel search strategy using Fermilab’s SpinQuest experiment, which is currently collecting data and expected to continue until around 2030.
Paper: Muonphilic_Scalar_Search
For questions/comments: dmforbes123 (at) gmail.com
Other Stuff! CV , Physics Lab Experience, Example Teaching Materials, Teaching Lessons I've Learned, Volunteering, Programming Projects, Chemistry Shenanigans, Art, Cooking, Fish