The summer after my junior year I had an internship at Argonne National Labs, in the High Energy Physics division, working on the ZEUS project. ZEUS is a detector for the HERA proton-electron asymmetric collider at DESY, Hamburg. I evaluated a scintillator-pad w/ fiber-optic readout hadron-electron shower max separator, which never got built due to budgetary/other reasons.
The summer after my fourth year, I worked for an HVAC engineering consultant - interesting, but boring after a couple months. About this time I decided physics was my calling, but finished my B.S.M.E. degree "just in case". It turned out to be useful a year later (see AbTox below). And who knows? With the state of physics research these days, not to mention professorships at universities, it might be useful again...
One of my most rewarding experiences at MU was working with Prof. Meera Chandrasekhar on an NSF-funded program to encourage girls' interest in science. We developed and built 4th-6th-grade-level physics lessons (light AND optics while I was there), then taught them in an 8-week course to a group of girls at Columbia Public Schools. (Click here to see a picture of a lesson on polarization.) I hope to devote some part of my career to being an advocate for early science education. Science should NOT be just for boys; labs taught just at schools in wealthier districts; most of all - taught so damn BORING! It's not difficult to make science interesting, and at the same time not rigorous.
After graduation, I had an internship doing plasma energy flow simulations at Tokyo Institute of Technology; the summer of 1993. To sum up my experience in Japan: INCREDIBLE! Although I didn't learn any language except how to ask where the train is, I did learn to recognize a considerable number of Kanji, and could get around the country with little help.
Upon returning to the States, I had to get rid of the habit of walking on the left side and bumping into everybody, and not bowing into the telephone anymore. Then I moved to Chicago did a 1-year stint wiht AbTox, Inc., planning on grad school in the fall. They invented a new form of medical equipment sterilization using low-pressure gas/plasma technology. The last half-year there, I performed research which led to a new but similar sterilization process. I now have a U.S. patent (#5603895) (and EU equivalent) stemming from that research, and another U.S. patent pending. Unfortunately, AbTox is now defunct.
In August of 1994 I moved up to Madison, Wisconsin and became a freshman (of sorts) again! I joined the Phenomenology group summer of 1995, and got to go to the TASI (Theoretical Advanced Study Institute, aka Tennis and Swimming Institute) summer school in Boulder, Colorado, for the month of June. Coming back to the insects in Wisconsin was somewhat of a letdown.
The summer of 1998 I spend in an NSF exchange program in Japan, working in the theory group at KEK, the Japanese laboratory for high energy (particle) physics. It was a great experience, and especially wonderful to see a different aspect of Japan (anything outside Tokyo is different than Tokyo). I also learned a bit more of the language this time.
I graduated with my Ph.D. in August of '99 and started a post-doc in the theory group at Fermilab in Chicago 9-1-99. It was a very smooth transition. Fermilab is a great place to do physics.
