My educational background includes a BS from Stetson University where I majored in Physics. I did two REU projects as an undergraduate - one at the University of Wyoming at Laramie and the other at the High Altitude Observatory (part of the National Center for Atmospheric Research) in Boulder, CO. The former involved infrared spectroscopy of Mars and the latter Doppler spectroscopy for the identification and classification of exoplanets.
I completed my MS and PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My MS work was an observational astronomy project concerning stellar populations in the Milky Way. I switched to experimental nuclear astrophysics for my PhD. My dissertation research involved a set of nuclear reactions that occur in globular cluster red giant stars.
After graduation from UNC, I received an associateship from the National Academies of Sciences to work at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. My research there involved the development of a detector for studying gamma-rays from the Sun. I later took a position as a senior scientist at the Remote Sensing Laboratory on Andrews Air Force Base where I continued research into gamma-ray detection methods.
