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Dear Members of the Villanova Physics Family,
It is with absolute heartbreak that I reach out to you to share the sudden loss of Amber Stuver, PhD, who passed away on Sept. 8. Dr. Stuver was a special colleague who lived the principles of Veritas, Unitas and Caritas in her approach to her craft, and she will be greatly missed by all members of our community.
Dr. Stuver embodied the teacher-scholar model, having earned her PhD in Gravitational-Wave Physics along with her MEd in Physics at Penn State University. She spent the next 10 years as a researcher at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) facility in Livingston, Louisiana. While there, she engaged in her love of teaching as an instructor at Louisiana State University. Dr. Stuver was part of the Nobel prize-winning group which first observed gravitational waves, as predicted by Einstein in 1915 and detected 100 years later by the LIGO collaboration. She came to Villanova in 2017 and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2023. Since then, Dr. Stuver has mentored and inspired a cohort of Villanova students who had the fortunate opportunity to participate in this cutting-edge astrophysics research.
Our Physics community, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Villanova University are all better because of Dr. Stuver’s efforts over her too short time here. She was a beloved colleague who will be greatly missed. We take some comfort in knowing that going forward, we can draw inspiration from the impact Dr. Stuver has had on the lives of students, faculty and staff alike.
We plan to hold an on-campus memorial for Dr. Stuver later this semester. Please keep Dr. Stuver, her husband Derek, and the rest of her family in your thoughts.
Best Wishes,
David Chuss, PhD, ’95 CLAS
Chair, Physics Department
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