teaching

At Penn State, Zhen teaches across the undergraduate and graduate condensed-matter curriculum and has developed new graduate courses at the frontier of the field. The emphasis is on building physical intuition alongside formal technique, in a classroom that is welcoming and inclusive.

Courses

PHYS 420 · Thermal Physics — required undergraduate core course; thermodynamics and statistical mechanics for all physics majors.

PHYS 513 · Quantum Theory of Solids II — the department’s advanced graduate elective in condensed-matter theory: many-body techniques, second quantization, mean-field theory, Green’s-function methods, diagrammatic calculation, transport theory, and superconductivity.

PHYS 518 · Critical Phenomena and Field Theory — a graduate elective designed and launched in 2025, applying renormalization-group and field-theoretic methods to critical phenomena in many-body physics.

Courses taught at Penn State

Curriculum development

• Designed and first taught PHYS 518, Critical Phenomena and Field Theory, a new graduate elective (Spring 2025).
• Developing a further graduate course, Field-Theoretical Methods in Quantum Matter, to bridge coursework and frontier research.