Alumni News


BING AI
Ph.D. PHYSICS `95, has been working on patent prosecution at the national intellectual property law firm of Fish & Richardson P.C. since `96. He is a registered patent agent and is studying for his Jurist Doctor degree at the University of San Diego. He and his wife have two boys.

JACK AVRIN
M.S. PHYSICS `51, worked as a defense/aerospace engineer for forty years, working primarily in areas related to information acquisition and processing. Upon retirement, he has developed a unique, geometrical model of the elementary particles which appears to explain many of the basic tenets of physics. His current research is focusing on a dynamic theory to fit the model to known phenomenology.

PHILIPPE DE LOREILHE
B.S. PHYSICS `82, B.S. ASTRONOMY `82, changed his name upon marriage and becoming a U.S. citizen to Philip de Louraille. He began his career at the Chevron Oil Field Research Center in La Habra, California as a geophysics programmer/researcher. He has changed fields and now works in computer and network security management. Since `98, he has been Head of Information for eBay, Inc.

J. KIRK DICKENS
B.A. PHYSICS `55, M.A. PHYSICS `62, Ph.D. PHYSICS `63, retired from Oak Ridge Laboratory after 32 years of full-time research. Since `96 he has been a research professor of Physics at the University of Tennessee, continuing part-time research at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He participated in measurements of the small neutron-capture cross section by the isotope 7-Li, a measurement having astrophysical implications (see Phys. Rev. C 54, 383 [1996]), which received the Lockheed-Martin Energy Research Corp. Technical Achievement award for `96. More recently his group succeeded in measuring the cold-neutron-capture cross section by the isotrop 208-Pb, the smallest neutron-capture cross section so far measured.

WAYNE `SAM' DODDS
B.S. PHYSICS `74, joined the United States Air Force upon graduation and flew F-4's for 12 years. He then went to Northrop Grumman Corporation to work on the B-2 project. In `98 he moved to Boeing North America to work on the NMD program. Throughout most of his career, he has been involved with training operators. He enjoy's golf and scuba diving when he finds the time.

STEPHEN DUCHARME
M.A. PHYSICS `82, Ph.D. PHYSICS `86, joined the faculty in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in `91, where he directs research on ferroelectric and photorefractive materials, and teaches a variety of physics courses. His group, working in collaboration with researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences, has made several notable breakthroughs in studies of ultrathin films of polyvinylidene fluride copyolymers, crystalline polymers similar to Teflon. The films have potential application in nonvolatile random access memories, infrared imaging, ultrasound, sonar, and high-energy capacitors. If you'd like further information on Professor Ducharme, surf to physics.unl.edu/directory/ducharme/ducharme.html.

EDWARD R. `NED' FLOYD
M.S. PHYSICS `65, Ph.D. PHYSICS `71, is now retired but recently published an article, "Which Casuality? Differences between Trajectory and Copenhagen Analyses of an Impulsive Perturbation", Int. J. Mod. Phys. A 14 (7), 1111-1124 (1999) quant-ph/9708026.

AMY FREDERICKS
B.S. ASTRONOMY `96, is currently a research assistant at Goddard Space Flight Center looking at X-ray data on Eta Carinae. She received her Masters from the University of Maryland Astronomy Department in December 1999.

CLINT D. HARPER
M.A. PHYSICS `73, Ph.D. PHYSICS `76, has been a professor of physics and astronomy at Moorpark College in Ventura County since 1977. In `92, he was selected faculty member of the year by the students and he received the college's first Distinguished Faculty Chair in `96. He is also a member (third term) of the Moorpark City Council and former mayor of the city. He loves sailing and has a Cal 27 sloop ("Jolly Mon"). If any USC alumni like sailing, he's always looking for a crew!

XIAO-ZHOU HUANG
M.A. PHYSICS `87, Ph.D. PHYSICS `91, after 3 years at Los Alamos National Laboratory doing research in condensed matter, he decided to change his career to finance and moved to New York City working for Citibank credit card division. While there, he introduced parallel computing technology and developed a bankruptcy model that generated 3 million dollars a year. He then moved to J.P. Morgan as a vice president in fixed income research. Currently, he is a proprietary stock trader at a hedge fund using datamining and risk management techniques to find out and utilize predictive factors in seemingly chaotic stock price movement and writing computer programs to execute buy/sell orders automatically.

JIEN-PING `J.P.' JIANG
Ph.D. PHYSICS `90, is currently working at QED, making diode pumped solid state lasers and doing research on spectroscopy (Raman and near infrared).

MYRON A. MANN
M.A. PHYSICS `64, taught for 30 plus years at L.A. Valley College, until his retirement. He is still teaching, at the college as well as in high schools. He also is the Southern California coordinator of the Two-Year College Physics Project under the auspices of the American Association of Physics Teachers.

SHANNON McCONNELL
B.S. ATRONOMY `89, is currently working as the Education Outreach Coordinator for NASA's Cassini Mission to Saturn. She lives in Pasadena, CA with her husband and son and when not travelling, working or playing with her son, she works as a member of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses.

JOHN MOORE
B.S. PHYSICS `67, is a program manager for AverStar, Inc., an Information Technology company. He supports the maintenance and development of mission critical software laboratories for the US Navy in the Southern California area. His outside interests include amateur radio and astronomy.

PHILIP J. MOORE
M.A. PHYSICS `87, worked in the defense industry for ten years before deciding he'd rather spend his days performing music. So he's now a freelance musician and is living a nice life.

FERNANDO MORINIGO
B.S. PHYSICS `57, became Chief Corporate Scientist at Aura Systems, Inc. of El Segundo, CA in `92 after retiring from Hughes Aircraft Company, and after a 28 year teaching career in the California State University system. In the past seven years, he has been granted 12 U.S. patents for various electromechanical devices. Several thousand mobile power devices with the trade name AuraGen, based on one of his patents, have been installed in commercial and military vehicles to date.

YIU `MIKE' NGAN
M.A. PHYSICS `74, Ph.D. PHYSICS `76, is now a senior systems engineer at Gencorp, a technology based aerospace company located in Azusa, CA. Since `96, after earning certification as a corporate Six Sigma Black Belt, he has led a major process and quality improvement effort on a `smart munitions' production program, in which advanced statistical methods were used successfully to improve product yields and reduce manufacturing cycle time. Mike and his wife recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary and live in San Gabriel, California with their daughter.

ROSHAN L. SHARMA
M.S. PHYSICS `55, is an Adjunct Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at SMU in Dallas, Texas and is keenly following developments in the fields of unified field theory with emphasis on string theory.

MARK W. SINCELL
B.S. PHYSICS `86, spent a year in Arizona making the transition from astrophysics research to science writing. He then moved to Houston, Texas with his wife who is teaching at Rice University. He currently covers astronomy, space science and physics issues for Science Magazine, the Discovery Channel, Astronomy Magazine and Earth and Sky Radio.

RAYMOND R. SINGH
B.S. PHYSICS `95, is currently an application developer for the Equity Derivatives Group at JP Morgan in New York. He is involved with a variety of tactical, trading and pricing applications for futures, options and equity swaps risk management.

HOWARD SPITZER
M.A. PHYSICS `67, Ph.D. PHYSICS `73, has been at TRW for the past 15 years, working in the field of satellite radiation survivability. He is also a Planning Commissioner for the City of Cerritos, California.

GEORGE STROBEL
Ph.D. PHYSICS `65, is now studying whether 2 dimensional numerical simulations of rough capsule surface implosions are adequate or whether 3 dimensional simulations are required. He is an Associate Professor in the Physics Department at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia.

SHIN-TSON WU
Ph.D., PHYSICS `81, has received the Y2K SID Special Recognition Award from the Society for Information Display. The award citation reads, "For the invention and commercialization of mixed mode twisted-nematic structure reflective liquid crystal displays". The award was formally presented to Dr. Wu on May 16, 2000 at the SID annual meeting.

WAYNE WEIMIN YU
M.A. PHYSICS `86, is the President of a high tech engineering company in Tustin, CA. Recent products include WebMux, a web server loan balancer and high availability product, and WebSpray, a web server testing tool.

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