Physics Grad Profiles

Patrick Harrington, class of 2014
Patrick is working as an intern in the R&D group at Thermo Scientific on laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy. As the third intern to Thermo on this project, we will be quite proud when the Thermo LIBS efforts come to fruition. Patrick’s senior thesis detailed the many different phenomena that convolute together in a LIBS spectrum, including first principles effects such as Stark broadening and Doppler broadening, as well as experimental effects such as instrument broadening and non-Gaussian beam profiles. Patrick coded a full simulation of these effects on intrinsic line widths and positions in an effort to better understand and calibrate experimental LIBS spectra.

Morgan Shook, class of 2014
Morgan is employed at Raytheon in the Integrated Defense Systems group in Woburn. She is employed as a Systems Engineer. She graduated from Gordon with her Physics degree and from USC with her Systems Engineering degree in 2014.

Brian Landis, class of 2014
Brian is working at UTC Aerospace Systems on advanced cargo-handling systems in wide-body jets (for both Boeing and Airbus). He’s located in North Dakota. Brian too graduated from Gordon with his Physics degree and from USC with his Astronautical Engineering degree in 2014.

Stephen Collins, class of 2014
Stephen is working on distributed grid research at Southern California Edison. He is responsible for building models to simulate expected powerflows under various scenarios including higher penetrations of solar, battery storage and electric vehicles on the grid. He works with teams from all over the country, including Caltech and Battelle. Stephen graduated from Gordon with his Physics degree and from USC with his Electrical Engineering degree in 2014.

Nathan Calandra, class of 2014
Nathan is working as a scientific programmer at Atmospheric & Environmental Research – a company that helps businesses and governments solve the world’s biggest climate issues.

Alegra Aulie, class of 2013
Upon graduation Alegra took a job as a research intern at Thermo Scientific working in the R&D group on laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). She continued work begun by Danielle Duggins there the previous year and built upon her own senior research work in the field of rare earth-doped luminescent phosphors. After completing her internship, Alegra took a job across the country at an optical photonics startup company Aurrion, located in Santa Barbara. She is enjoying the more temperate climate of California.

Jeff Ratzloff, class of 2013
Jeff Ratzloff is pursuing his Ph.D. in Astrophysics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research group is currently planning a trip down to Chile to help deploy a new instrument in early 2015.

Jon Hamill, class of 2013
Upon graduation, Jon spent some time working at our very own CTS before accepting a job at NYU in the scientific computing cluster group. At NYU Jon was sys admin for several of the computing clusters that supported computational physics research. Recently Jon accepted a new position at Yale University, again as a sys admin and in support of scientific computing efforts at that New Haven institution.

Melissa Haire, class of 2013
Melissa graduated from Gordon with a double major in Physics and Math. She is currently at the University of Connecticut pursuing her Ph.D. in Math and loving every minute of her time there! She is known to make occasional surprise visits back to campus to everyone’s delight.

Zach Capalbo, class of 2012
After graduating with honors in physics, Zach was hired by Thermo Scientific. He spent a summer working there as a hardware/software interface developer on the Tru-Narc handheld Raman spectrometer after his junior year. He continues to develop his expertise in the hardware/software interface, and working on projects related to handheld spectroscopic techniques at Thermo.

Zach has been given more responsibilities after nearly 3 years at Thermo Scientific. In addition to managing the hardware/software interface for the handheld instruments group, he is also working directly with the R & D group on development of new handheld spectroscopic techniques

Danielle Duggins, class of 2012
After finishing up an internship in the R & D group at Thermo Scientific, Danielle moved to California where she was hired by Dr. Lee during his time serving as President and CTO of Glassimetal Technology, an 8-person materials science startup based in Pasadena, CA, founded by Dr. Lee’s Ph.D. advisor from Caltech. After working at Glassimetal for the year, Danielle decided to pursue her Ph.D. and is now a Ph.D. student at Northwestern in Materials Science.

Robert (Buddy) Fryer, class of 2011
Buddy originally intended to pursue a Master's Degree in Medical Physics at the University of Maine, but along the way he became interested in the materials physics aspects of semiconductor interfaces and silicides. Buddy decided to pursue a Ph.D. in solid state physics and is currently in his 3rd year at U Maine studying interfacial phenomena in semiconductor junctions.

Michael Percuoco, class of 2011
Mike completed his Master's Degree in Physics at Northeastern, got married to Anna and decided to get a job. Mike is employed as a software engineer in Boston.

Jonathan Sheeks, class of 2011
Jonathan leveraged his summer internship with startup company Zink into a permanent position. Zink was started by some ex-Polaroid engineers and scientists to commercialize a color printing technology that requires no ink ("zero-ink") because the colorant is contained within the print media itself. You can learn more about this company at its website, www.zink.com.

Thomas Botticello, class of 2010
Thomas double majored in physics and Biblical studies. He works at the Proton Cancer Treatment Center of Massachusetts General Hospital doing quality assurance and quality control on the proton beam and on patient specific, aperture and range compensation hardware. Thomas is the fourth of our recent graduates working in health physics at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Spencer Carson, class of 2010
Spencer is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in experimental biophysics at Northeastern University. In the lab of Meni Wanunu, he is researching and fabricating solid state nanopores for use in the sequencing of DNA and studying the kinetics of restriction enzymes.
 

Jordan Montgomery, class of 2010
Jordan triple-majored in physics, math and biblical studies and is currently a graduate student in Astrophysics at Boston University where he is studying galaxy formation through numerical simulations.