Research Interests:

Nanotechnology – For the past few years, my research students and I have been learning how to use photolithography to create micro-patterns on silicon wafers.  Our goal is to experiment with various types of micro-machines and micro-fluidic devices, with the eventual goal of using these constructs to investigate areas of fundamental physics.  One such application is the use of micro-cantilevers to study the Casimir effect, a purely quantum mechanical phenomenon in which electric field fluctuations in the vacuum can give rise to a measurable attractive (or, perhaps, repulsive) force between appropriately chosen objects (two metal plates, for example).  Since the Casimir effect is a very short-range phenomenon (on the order of a few microns), experiments in this area micro- or nano-structures.

Experimental high energy physics – Although I am not currently active in this area, I try to stay abreast of results in this field and may renew my involvement in HEP someday.  My doctoral thesis was a study of baryon production using the CLEO experiment, a general purpose high energy particle detector located at CESR, the Cornell Electron Storage Ring.  CESR produced colliding beams of electrons and positrons at a center of mass energy in the vicinity of 10 GeV, which is appropriate for copious creation of Upsilon particles (including excited states).  The CLEO experiment was designed primarily to study bottom quarks, the particles which comprise the Upsilons created at CESR.
          As a postdoc at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, I was primarily involved in searches for supersymmetric particles.  Supersymmetry (SUSY), a theoretical scheme in which every known fundamental particle in nature receives a partner with a different spin assignment, has been suggested as an extension to the Standard Model of particle physics.  The Standard Model enjoys remarkable agreement with experimental observations but it can not, by itself, serve as a basis for a Unified Field Theory, in which all forces in nature arise from a single interaction.  SUSY can serve such a purpose (maybe) and, as such, evidence for supersymmetric particle production is sought with great fervor.

Education:

Ph.D., Physics, Harvard Univ.

M.A., Physics, Harvard Univ.

B.A., Physics, Rutgers Univ.

Prior positions:

Assistant Professor, Houghton College