Adjunct Associate Professor
My intense interest in electromagnetic waves and the interaction of rf radiation with matter goes back to my high school days. As an undergraduate, this interest was pursued and I was awarded a Magnetic Fusion Energy Technology Fellowship by the U.S. Department of Energy to study two years at the University of California-Berkeley graduate school. I received a Masters of Science degree in 1985 and my Ph.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1990. Both degrees are in Electrical Engineering, specializing in the field of plasma physics.
My Ph.D. dissertation was about driving direct electrical currents in plasmas using circularly polarized low frequency electromagnetic (Alfvén) waves. As a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Fusion Studies in Austin, Texas, I researched the absorption of toroicity-induced Alfvén waves in a tokamak plasma. This work contributed to the understanding of a burning fusion plasma.I continued this work at General Atomics in San Diego, California. In 1995, I became a scientist in the Dielectric Etch Division of Applied Materials in Santa Clara, California, were I solved many problems related to high DC and RF voltages and low pressure gases, efficient application of relatively high RF power to plasmas, electrostatic chucking of wafers, and plasma uniformity. My work there has resulted in ten U.S patents.
In late 1998, I accepted a teaching position in the physics department at the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE), where I give courses in electric and magnetic fields and in modern physics. In 2000, I joined the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) part-time as a scientist specializing in microwaves and EPR.
Since 2001, I have taught about half-time at MSOE and have done EPR research about half-time at MCW. My research here has resulted in five publications. The subjects of these publications include the discovery of how to make a microwave cavity with an additional axis of spatial uniformity, and the discovery of a way of increasing the EPR signal strength by almost an order of magnitude through sample partitioning and unconventional orientation and placement. In my work at the MCW, I enjoy an intense collaboration with Jim Hyde and make extensive use of finite element electromagnetic computer modeling.
Publications