Noah Finkelstein

Noah David Finkelstein (born July 1968) is a professor of physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is a founding co-director of the Colorado Center for STEM Learning, a President’s Teaching Scholar, and the inaugural Timmerhaus Teaching Ambassador. His research focuses on physics education and on developing models of context, the scope of which involves students, departments, and institutional scales of transformation. In 2010, Finkelstein testified to the United States House Committee on Science, Space and Technology on how to strengthen undergraduate and postgraduate STEM education.

Education Finkelstein graduated at Yale University with a magna cum laude degree in mathematics in 1990. He obtained a Ph.D. in applied physics from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University in 1998. and the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2021. His primary focus is in physics education research.

Personal life Finkelstein’s mother Edith B. Gelles is a senior scholar of gender studies at Stanford University. His father is professor emeritus of mathematics at UC Irvine, and his brother Adam is a professor of computer science at Princeton University.