Biography
I was born and raised in Rigby Idaho, a small farming community. I am the oldest of 10 siblings. Some of my favorite things include: family, a well-maintained lawn, woodworking, basketball, and materials physics.
Teaching
I enjoy teaching all physics, but some of my favorites are these:
- PH123 - Intro to Waves, Thermodynamics, Optics (offered year round)
- PH323 - Solid State Physics (offered odd-year fall semesters)
- PH385 - Computational Physics (offered winter semesters)
- PH412 - Thermal Physics (offered fall semester)
Education
I graduated from Brigham Young University-Idaho in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in physics. I attended graduate school at Brigham Young University under the tutelage of Dr. Gus Hart. We had a lot of fun building alloy models and using them to study the thermodynamic stability of alloy systems. We traveled to many fun places including Berlin, Germany, Cape Town, South Africa and more. He’s a great friend and mentor to me, and I owe him a lot.
Research
My research involves materials simulation, which means I like to use computers to make exciting discoveries about emerging materials. I get a lot of enjoyment from the algorithm development process. During graduate school, I helped develop new ways to build a model called the cluster expansion. Since then, many new exciting models have emerged. Together with machine learning techniques, the field of materials modeling is a very exciting one right now.