Biography

My background is in experimental particle physics. My dissertation was on the commissioning of the G0 detector, at JLab, that would probe the strange quark content of the proton. The technique of parity violation was used to probe the strange quarks inside the proton. This was quite the experience, I had the unique opportunity to analyse data from a detector that I helped build. This is typically not the case. The typical situation is to have a student work on data analysis from one experiment and build something for the next generation of that experiment. After completing my time at The College of William and Mary, I moved on to neutrino physics at the University of Pennsylvania. Thus I moved from the world of quarks to the world of leptons! While I was a post-doc at Penn I worked on the third phase of the SNO experiment. I was very lucky as an undergraduate at the University of Cincinnati, I got to do some coding but the highlight of my time as an undergrad was looking at data from a prototype detector built at UC to understand the beam and detector for BaBar. As a Masters student, at Ole Miss, I created a test stand for quantifying the radiation damage to the CsI(th) crystals that were used in the BaBar calorimeter. Then as a doctoral student I helped build half of our detector (the other half was made by the French). I got to work in the injector at the accelerator. There we tried our best to minimize systematic errors in our electron beam. And so I had a good deal of hardware experience. I felt that for my post-doc I should look for something that was data driven. I recall having a number of choices for my post-doctoral work but it was very easy to decide. Meeting the physicists at Penn were something special. The SNO experiment was excellent physics and the people were incredible. It was during this period that I began thinking about my career and wanting to stay active in Research and do science...but I also wanted to have an impact on people's lives. Just as those physicists at UC took me under their wing and *I* wanted to do that for someone else...and now I am at Armstrong Atlantic State University (AASU) in beautiful Savannah Georgia! And I have students working with me on two experiments that I am currently on SNO+ and HALO.