CURRICULUM VITAE
The most recent version of my CV can be downloaded by clicking here.
A BRIEF AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Born and raised in Los Angeles, then (and still) a hub for the aerospace industry, I was interested in science and engineering from an early age. Nevertheless, through much of my youth I dabbled in a variety of other subjects before returning to my one true love (at least at that time) – physics. I graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a BS in Physics in 2004.
In college, I was a member of an all-undergraduate team that conducted research on fluid mixing on surfaces in microgravity environments (including a ride on the “Vomit Comet”). Shortly thereafter, I spent a summer in the Department of Astronomy at Cornell University modeling the effects of pointing error on the Spitzer Space Telescope’s Infrared Spectrograph. For graduate school, I decided to focus on more applied aspects of physics. After a brief stint in plasma physics at MIT, I joined the Computational Biophysics Group of Prof. Collin Stultz and became quite enamored with proteins.
I received my PhD in Physics from MIT in early 2010 and then moved back to the West Coast to join Prof. Teresa Head-Gordon’s group in the QB3 Institute at UC Berkeley as a postdoc. In the fall of 2011 I returned to my old stomping grounds – the LA area – as a visiting assistant professor of physics in the Keck Science Department of Claremont McKenna, Pitzer, and Scripps Colleges. After three good years at Keck I moved to Caltech as a research assistant professor in the planetary science department, where I worked for nearly two years. From the spring of 2016 through 2023, I was an assistant → associate professor at Cal State LA, jointly appointed in Physics & Astronomy and Biological Sciences. Now I’m an associate professor in the Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences at Claremont McKenna College.
Outside of academic life, I have participated in several different “extracurricular” activities. The one that my family and friends probably complain about the most though is cycling. I was a member of the MIT Cycling team throughout graduate school and am an avid racing fan. Recently, I’ve been running (5 and 10Ks) and doing a variety of road, multi-surface (a.k.a. gravel), and mountain biking. I’m also a board member of East Altadena Little League and a volunteer math enrichment coach at Longfellow Elementary School.