I was born to my loving parents during the final weeks of their Immunology and Microbiology PhDs in Madison, Wisconsin. Shortly after my birth and after defending their doctoral thesis, the family moved to Denver, Colorado to do a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Colorado. I spent most of my childhood in Colorado. My parents started a microbiology research laboratory together and my earliest memories were of my parents working on grant proposals in their shared office at the university. Much of my early childhood was spent at the university where I performed my own little experiments under their supervision, culturing bacteria, propagating cell-lines. This upbringing was the seed of my love for science and technology. Unlike my parents, my mind was drawn to the macro world of physics; only to find that many of the questions in modern physics can best be addressed from the super-micro perspective of atoms.
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During my undergrad at Boulder, I had the good fortune of working with Professor Jamie Nagle on the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Lab. Under his guidance, I developed the fiber-optic scintillator panels for the hydronic calorimeter detector in the sPHENIX experiment and developed an automated test stand that was used to quality-control check the thousands of scintillating panels that were installed in the calorimeter. As a part of this project and to my great delight, I had the opportunity to visit the Fermilab in Chicago. I was allowed to run their particle accelerator testing the calorimeter's performance. It was an incredible honor and it was a profound experience to see the detector that I had helped engineer actually detecting high energy subatomic particles. Dr. Nagle also gave me the opportunity to work on data analysis projects in C++. For one of these projects, I developed an algorithm to flag particle bunch crossings in the particle collider with one or more nuclear collisions. This algorithm was pushed to the collaboration function library where it was used to publish nearly 30 papers in the subsequent years. During my undergrad research, I soon realized that my talent in physics lay as an experimentalist. That realization lead me to pursue a PhD at Columbia University.
When I arrived at Columbia. I decided to switch to a field where I would be able to do hardware engineering as well as software analysis. AMO physics seemed to have the perfect mix of awesome physics, hardware, and software. I asked Professor Will for the opportunity to volunteer in his laboratory during the summer before starting graduate school in September. This opportunity set me on the path to learning the basics of experimental AMO. The next summer I joined the Zelevinsky Lab to work on the direct laser cooling of hydride molecules. Here the lab's senior graduate student and post-doctoral fellow gave me the opportunity to develop components for the molecule Barium Hydride (BaH). I learned the basics of optics and photonics in addition to Labview experiment control. After cooling BaH, the senior grad student and the post-doc left the group and I was given control of the experiment in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the difficult circumstances, I led the experiment through the transition to a new molecule, Calcium Hydride (CaH), developed all new hardware systems, and used this new machinary to demonstrate two forms of laser cooling (doppler and sisyphus cooling). These results were submitted to NJP. I am now concentrating on preparing my thesis, expecting to defend in June of 2022.
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The more physics I study, the clearer it becomes to me that cutting-edge physics research can be applied to current engineering problems of powerful technologies. I have developed an interest in quantum computing and am fascinated by the possibility of engineering quantum systems to store information and resist decoherence. It is my hope that the advent of generalized quantum computing will bring about a information revolution in physics, economics, and information science. Additionally, I have witnessed the proliferation of the internet and have seen the power of networking and blockchain technologies when they mature and are accessible to the general population.
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My skills as a full-stack developer have grown thanks to the sum of the engineering and molecular physics projects that I have had the opportunity to participate in. It is my hope that I can continue to grow and collaborate with others who share my interest in the revolutionary technologies of our generation.
My Family
My paternal grandmother, the daughter of a muleteer who worked in the neighborhood of El Albaicín the city of Granada – Spain, grew up in the poverty and chaos of the Spanish Civil War, a terrible event that prevented her from going to school. My paternal grandfather was a stone mason specializing in the restoration of southern Andalusian Arabic structural art. My grandparents raised a family of three children in a one-room house without electricity, running water, or toilets. My illiterate grandmother realized that education was a way out of the cycle of poverty and she encouraged my father to focus on his studies. At the same time, my grandfather was an avid hunter who taught my father an appreciation for the natural world and the animals inhabiting it. These two influences lead my father to veterinary school and ultimately microbiology graduate school.
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My mother was born to a poor Irish family in Brooklyn in the 1950's. My mother's childhood was full of familial instability because my grandmother moved the family to new cities nearly every year. Eventually, my mother decided to strike out on her own and she moved to Spain when she was 18. She lived there for 10 years and started a family, but when she decided to go to vet school, her husband at the time forbade it. My mother divorced this first husband and took my three siblings with her. My mother, a single mother, met my father while attending veterinary school in Spain. After graduating, they decided to leave Spain and immigrate to the US to pursue a graduate education.
In 1989, my family moved from Cordoba, Spain to Madison, Wisconsin. While my father's student visa was being processed, he worked delivering phone books, and supplemented the family economy by selling vegetables in the farmer’s market. My parents both attended graduate school at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and soon graduated with their PhD's in Microbiology and Mucosal Immunology. My father went on to become a professor at the University of Colorado Medical School and Microbiology Department. My mother has been his senior staff scientist and lab manager for their entire career.
Education
2017-2022
Columbia University, Physics, PhD
2013-2017
University of Colorado at Boulder, Physics, BS
Awards, Scholarships and Grants
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Columbia Provost Diversity Fellowship (2017)
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SUNY Stoney Brook Turner Fellowship (2017)
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Conference Experience for Undergraduates Grant (2016)
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CU Boulder College of Arts and Science Dean's List (2015-2017)
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Conference Experience for Undergraduates Grant (2015)
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President Horace M. Hale Award (2013-2017)