Rate My Professor Patrick Motl

Patrick Motl, Ph.D., is Dean of the School of Sciences and Professor of Physics at Indiana University Kokomo, where he directs the IU Kokomo Observatory and hosts public open houses on the second Sunday of each month during the academic year. He earned a Doctorate of Philosophy in Physics from Louisiana State University in December 2001, advised by Dr. Juhan Frank and Dr. Joel E. Tohline, and a Bachelor of Science in Physics with departmental honors from Indiana University Bloomington in August 1993. Early in his career at Louisiana State University, Motl served as Planetarium Coordinator (1997-1999), Teaching Assistant developing the Highland Road Park Observatory (1997-1998), and Information Technology Consultant for High Performance Computing (1999-2000). Postdoctoral research appointments followed at the University of Missouri (2000-2002), University of Colorado (2002-2004), and Louisiana State University (2004-2008). He joined Indiana University Kokomo as Assistant Professor of Physics in 2008, advancing through roles including associate dean to his current deanship.

Motl specializes in numerical simulations of compact objects—dense stellar remnants such as neutron stars, white dwarfs, and black holes—focusing on their interactions in binary systems, mergers, accretion processes, and emissions including gravitational waves. Key publications include 'Gravitational and electromagnetic outputs from binary neutron star mergers' (Palenzuela et al., 2013, arXiv), 'Do R Coronae Borealis Stars Form from Double White Dwarf Mergers?' (Staff et al., 2012, The Astrophysical Journal), 'Boosting jet power in black hole spacetimes' (Neilsen et al., 2011, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), 'Mergers of Magnetized Neutron Stars with Spinning Black Holes: Disruption, Accretion and Fallback' (Chawla et al., 2010, Physical Review Letters), 'Perturbed disks get shocked: Binary black hole merger effects on accretion disks' (Megevand et al., 2009, Physical Review D), 'Magnetized Neutron-Star Mergers and Gravitational-Wave Signals' (Anderson et al., 2008, Physical Review Letters), and 'Cluster Structure in Cosmological Simulations I: Correlation to Observables, Mass Estimates and Evolution' (Jeltema et al., 2008, The Astrophysical Journal). He received the IU Kokomo Faculty Research Award in 2012 and holds memberships in the American Astronomical Society, American Physical Society, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, American Association of Physics Teachers, and Indiana Academy of Science.