Robert Davies
Physics
Associate Professor
Contact Information
Office Location: SER 218DPhone: 435-753-5707
Email: robert.davies@usu.edu
Additional Information:
Educational Background
Biography
As a physicist, my training was in atmospheric physics, surface physics, and quantum optics. But for more than two decades my work has centered on complex adaptive systems, planetary change, civilizational futures, and critical science communication and storytelling. Together with USU's Fry Street Quartet and a number of visual artists, I am co-creator of Rising Tide | The Crossroads Project — a "performance science" work weaving science lecture, imagery, and music into the story of humanity's journey. The project has been staged in more than seventy performances across the United States, Mexico, and Brazil.
I have taught on the faculty of three universities and worked as a project scientist at Utah State University's Space Dynamics Laboratory, as technical liaison for NASA's International Space Station program in Moscow, as a physicist with the Utah Climate Center, and as an officer and meteorologist in the United States Air Force. Originally from the Black Hills of South Dakota, I've called Cache Valley home for most of the past thirty years.
Teaching Interests
I develop and teach courses centered on global change, human futures, and civilizational sustainability through a whole-systems framework, and I also teach throughout the undergraduate physics curriculum. My current teaching includes:
CCA 3070 "Unveiling the Anthropocene" — an exploration of human sustainability and vibrancy through three questions: Where We Are, Where We Want To Be, and How We Get There. Created in collaboration with the Caine College of the Arts, it is designed as a physical science course for students in the fine arts and humanities.
CIVC 1400 "Planetary Change and Human Futures" — a general education physical science course, created in collaboration with USU's Center for Civic Excellence, that uses climate and Earth systems to build scientific literacy for students across every major.
PHYS 3550 "Intermediate Classical Mechanics" — an advanced treatment of the mathematical techniques for solving equations of motion, including Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics.
I've also developed and taught courses in ecological economics and climate change. Beyond my own courses, I guest lecture regularly across the university curriculum, and I maintain an active public speaking schedule — I've delivered hundreds of lectures on these topics to civic organizations, policymakers, municipal boards, and schools.
Research Interests
My work centers on one large question: how a civilization built on ever-increasing consumption of energy and materials can navigate a century defined by physical limits. I study the point where physics meets the human world — using thermodynamics, energy systems, and the science of complex systems to understand the constraints the coming decades will place on how we live, and what a genuinely sustainable, just, and vibrant society could look like within them.
Much of my current effort goes into teaching and public engagement. I consider this part of my research. I design and teache courses that help students from every major make sense of large-scale change — not by handing them conclusions, but by building the capacity to think clearly across science, ethics, and systems, and to face difficult realities without either denial or despair. Alongside this classroom work, I write for general audiences and collaborates widely, translating between the technical language of physics and the questions ordinary people are actually asking about the future. I like to think of myself as both a physicist and an artist, and am especially interested in how we make meaning and stay grounded in a time of profound uncertainty.
Underlying all of it is my conviction that the university's oldest purpose — serving communities through times of change — matters now more than ever. I'd like to think my teaching and research aim to prepare students not just for careers, but for the work of building resilient, thriving communities in a rapidly changing world.
Publications | Book Chapters
An asterisk (*) at the end of a publication indicates that it has not been peer-reviewed.
Publications | Journal Articles
Academic Journal
An asterisk (*) at the end of a publication indicates that it has not been peer-reviewed.
Publications | Other
An asterisk (*) at the end of a publication indicates that it has not been peer-reviewed.