I began studying atomic physics as an undergraduate in physics
at Kansas State University, doing research
with C.D. Lin. After graduating with a B.S. in 1993, I continued
in atomic physics as a graduate student at the University
of Colorado, working with Chris
H. Greene in JILA.
While at JILA, I worked on a number of problems: the many-body theory of Bose-Einstein condensation,
a study of Efimov states in the helium
trimer, double photoionization in helium, ultracold atomic collisions,
and aspects of the decay of metastable ionic molecules. Upon receiving
my Ph.D. in the fall of 1997, I became a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute
for Theoretical Atomic and Molecular Physics (ITAMP)
at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center
for Astrophysics. While there, I also worked on a variety of
problems such as three-body recombination in alkali atoms, a reformulation of
the HD+ problem, time-dependent wavepacket
dynamics in LiF, and spontaneous spatial symmetry breaking in multicomponent
atomic Bose-Einstein condensates
In the fall of 1999, I returned to Kansas State University as an assistant professor, and was promoted to associate professor in 2003. My work here focuses on ultracold few-body collisions and interactions of matter with intense lasers.