Ahren has been a member of the CLEO collaboration since its inception. He is presently part of the CLEO-c experiment. In addition he is very much involved in the LEPP Education and Outreach efforts where he works very closely with the Director of Education Programs, Lora Hine(lkh24@cornell.edu). He is also the Lepp representative to the Interactions.org collaboration; an international group of communicators representing all of the high energy particle accelerator facilities in the world.
Ahren teaches two courses in the Physics Department at Cornell. "Why the Sky is Blue" is aimed at non-science students (see link on right). It emphasizes the conceptual and methodological foundations of physics, with an emphasis on the unification of many of the Laws of Nature. "Concepts of Modern Physics" is a one credit course aimed at first year physics majors. Since most physics students see very few modern physics topics until their third of fourth semesters, the course introduces these concepts in thier first semester in parallel with their standard introductory mechanics course. Topics include the importance of symmetry, quantum mechanics, the Standard Model of particle physics and cosmology. The emphasis is conceptual not computational.