Brian Gentry’s innovative impact on the Hollins classroom has been profound. His multidisciplinary approach to teaching physics and how technology and the classroom can intersect helped create new teaching standards. Gentry taught a calculus- based physics course and created a course in film studies, “Women Scientists and Doctors in Film.” He was central in Hollins’ effort to pivot academically during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading the move to online lab work and flipped classroom efforts to alleviate student anxiety.

Under Gentry’s guidance and unwavering mentorship of the Hollins Pre-med Program, more than a dozen aspiring students have enrolled in medical or physician’s assistant school. Students also had his impressive research as a standard for their own scientific careers. His chapter “Mechanical Properties of Active Biopolymer Networks” in Soft Matter and Biomaterials on the Nanoscale (World Scientific, 2020) advanced the field’s understanding of fundamental and application-inspired aspects of soft and bio-nanomaterials.

Equally as passionate about teaching and communicating physics to future physicists and non-physicists alike, Gentry shared his interests in the many intersections between physics and the biological sciences with his students and colleagues.