C. Clifton Chancey
Comprehensive Colleges & Universities Constituency Director
Professor and Head of Physics
University of Northern Iowa

Cliff Chancey is professor and head of physics at the University of Northern Iowa. His research interests include atomic and molecular theory, biophysical modeling and neuroscience, mathematical physics, and geophysical modeling. His most recent atomic and molecular research centered on explaining the electronic and vibrational structure of Buckminsterfullerene, the soccer ball-shaped molecule C60. He has studied the physics of sand movement in sand dunes and the electrical and physical processes involved in neural transmission. Much of his present research is directed toward providing a theory for sodium and potassium channel gating in excitable cells like neurons. Chancey received his B.Sc. at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1977 and his M.A. (1980) and Ph.D. (1985) at Johns Hopkins University. From 1985-1988, he held a postdoctoral research position at Oxford University in England. He went on to hold academic positions at Amherst College and Purdue University-Calumet. He held a Senior Visiting Fellowship in Theroetical Physics at Oxford in 1996. A referee for a number of journals, he is the author of 27 research papers and the co-author (with M.C.M. O'Brien) of The Jahn-Teller Effect in C₆₀ and Other Icosahedral Complexes (Princeton U. Press, 1997). A Life Member of Sigma Xi since 1990, Chancey is also a member of the American Physical Society, American Association of Physics Teachers, Council on Undergraduate Research, Biophysical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Mathematical Association of America and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He has served Sigma Xi in many capacities at the local, regional and national levels.