In this website I hope you will find - a little information about me, how and why I like to teach, why I love Physics, what I work on in my research, and how I spend some of my spare time (for instance, the photos at the top of each page were taken by me). There are links at the top to my CV, my teaching philosophy, my teaching methodology and materials, and a brief and mostly non-technical description of my research.
teaching
Teaching is as much a calling as it is a profession. While most people find themselves playing either the student or the master, those of us who teach know that the two roles are not separate, but intertwined. As a young boy, I listened raptly as my elder sister--10 years my senior, and in medical school at the time--explained to me the life cycle of a Malarial parasite. It was a fascinating lecture for me, and served as a well-timed review for her. In high school, I stayed after school to tutor classmates in the day's material. The night before the CHM 101 final, my college roommate and I surveyed a room for two packed instead with thirteen of our fellows, eager to learn how to read basic NMR plots. As a first year graduate student, even while on fellowship, I joined the rest of my cohort in helping undergraduates in the Learning Resource Center, helping them work through Physics problems. I enjoyed the thrill of the puzzle, of course--the hard nut to crack, the unknown answer. But the real puzzle I was solving was how best to teach; how to--without simply handing out answers--guide an undergraduate, through the gentle push of simpler questions, toward the light of understanding. My real reward, seeing that "Oh!" or "A-ha!" moment dawn on their face. I have learned much--about Physics, and about how people learn. And I have learned some things about myself--that one way or another, I have always been drawn to teaching, and that I have never learned more than while teaching the subject I love. But teaching is a puzzle without a perfect answer, one which I am still solving, and along the way I hope to teach and learn much more.
physics
"And the wolf huffed, and he puffed, and he blew the house of straw down!"
"Why?"
"So he could catch the piggy."
"Why?"
"So he could eat him."
"Why?"
"Because he was hungry, that's why!"
The bookshelves of my childhood were filled with facts and wonders. The Charlie Brown Encyclopedias, the World Book Encyclopedias, How Things Work, Physics, Biology and Chemistry texts from my two elder sisters. A voracious reader, I greeted each new school year with joy. There was no way I could understand all the books in the house, but with each passing semester, I understood more and more, and the books became clearer; the doors to new understanding slowly opened. Each of the sciences fascinated me, but at some point in high school, I had an encounter that I suppose is a bit of a standard cliche for physicists of my generation. I read "A Brief History of Time", and decided that I wanted to, as Hawking put it, "know the mind of God". My path was set: I would join the brave men and women of centuries past who had struggled to understand the Universe, who had realized that answers mostly come from questions, who had watched Existence with all its myriad wonders and marvelous processes, who had seen that Things Were The Way Things Were, and who had dared to ask that simplest, yet most cutting of questions--'Why?'
"Why?"
"So he could catch the piggy."
"Why?"
"So he could eat him."
"Why?"
"Because he was hungry, that's why!"
The bookshelves of my childhood were filled with facts and wonders. The Charlie Brown Encyclopedias, the World Book Encyclopedias, How Things Work, Physics, Biology and Chemistry texts from my two elder sisters. A voracious reader, I greeted each new school year with joy. There was no way I could understand all the books in the house, but with each passing semester, I understood more and more, and the books became clearer; the doors to new understanding slowly opened. Each of the sciences fascinated me, but at some point in high school, I had an encounter that I suppose is a bit of a standard cliche for physicists of my generation. I read "A Brief History of Time", and decided that I wanted to, as Hawking put it, "know the mind of God". My path was set: I would join the brave men and women of centuries past who had struggled to understand the Universe, who had realized that answers mostly come from questions, who had watched Existence with all its myriad wonders and marvelous processes, who had seen that Things Were The Way Things Were, and who had dared to ask that simplest, yet most cutting of questions--'Why?'