Careers

Shannon Runyon worked for D.O.E. on the cleanup of the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state. She then moved back to Hawaii and finished her Masters in Education and worked as a math and physics teacher for a while. After that she worked at a biotech company called Aquasearch. She is currently working as a consultant.
Irvin Henderson finished his MBA at Cornell University and then went to work in NYC for Deutsche Banc.
Cal Hose is a self-employed software contractor. He designs, builds and integrates databases.
Brent Killey is teaching physics at La Serna High School in Whittier.
Nicholas Kaposhilin started his own consulting firm for Business Performance Management and is now the Executive Director of StrategicApps ConsuIting Pte Ltd. and lives in Singapore.

Konomi Shimada received her Masters in Mechanical Engineering from USC and then worked for Cymer Inc doing "a lot of project management jobs" as well as opto-mechanical design. She then moved on to Intel as a Senior Mechanical Engineer in their R&D facility studying heat sink designs.

Chris McIntosh earned his PH.D in Physics from Lehigh University  and then became Head of Laser Module Development for Keopsys (Key Optical Systems). He lives in France.
David Wilson moved to Michigan to work as a chassis engineer for Toyota. The 2007 model year Tundra was completed by his suspension design team (product development).
Megan Taylor earned her M.S. in Technical Communication from the University of Washington. She then worked as a copy editor for the Eastside Journal newspaper. Later she worked for the Coastal Protection and Restoration Division of NOAA, where she created their Web page. Megan is now doing freelance writing and editing.
Mason Rourman received a Master's degree in Physics from Cal. State Fullerton. He then went to work for Hughes Corporation. Two years later he moved to Northrop Grumman. Mason was sent to England for a couple of years but is now back in the US.

Rob Williams worked as an integrated circuit designer for hi/fn (www.hifn.com) in San Jose, Ca. He left hi/fn in '98 to form Invertex which then got bought by Cacheflow in late '99.
John McLaughlin completed a Master's degree in Manufacturing Systems Engineering at Stanford University. He then went to work for WET Design, a company that designs water displays (his company designed the water display at the Bellagio in Las Vegas).

Mike Ambrose is the chair of both the science and math departments at Connelly High School in Orange County. In 2003 he was selected as one of "Ten Teachers Making a Difference" by OC Family Magazine.

Kevin St. Jean worked for Boeing for a few years and then with a company called Silicon Valley Group, Inc. He then went to work for Raytheon as a System Engineer for Radar Design.

Meghan Miller graduated from Columbia University with a MS in mining engineering and applied geophysics and then from Cornell University with a M.Eng. in Geological Science, modeling fluid flow in sedimentary basins using seismic data. Meghan lived in San Fransisco for 3 years working for the US Geological Survey and then a 3D software company. In 2006 she received her Ph.D. in geophyics and tectonics from the Australian National University in Canberra. She then was a post-doc at Rice University and has just been hired as a tenure track faculty member at USC.

Miguel Salazar graduated from medical school at UC Irvine in Spring 2004. He then went to work at UCI Medical Center in Orange in the coronary intensive care unit.

Georgi Gospodinov earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Brandeis University and is now a faculty member at Olin College of Engineering.
Robert Benavides got a job working in forensics.
Radha Pertaub is working in the Boston area, helping to design and make optical instruments.

Robert Utter got his Masters degree in Physics from Cal. State Fullerton, and is now teaching physics at local Community Colleges.
Miguel Franco worked for a while as an Associate Scientist at Beckman Coulter, where he tested and debugged lab automation equipment, both hardware and software. He was then accepted into the Biomedical Engineering Masters program at UCLA.

Michael Huang worked in a research lab at Aerospace Corporation for a couple of years and then went into the Masters program in Mechanical Engineering at USC.

Kalina Gospodinova moved to the Boston area where she held down several jobs before joining the research group of Prof. Samuel P. Kounaves at Tufts University. This group is currently working on a very exciting project, the Phoenix Mars Mission. Launched in August 2007, the Phoenix Mars Mission is the first in NASA's Scout Program. Phoenix is designed to study the history of water and habitability potential in the Martian arctic's ice-rich soil. Kounaves’ group is responsible for the Wet Chemistry Lab, one of the experiments on the Mars Scout Lander that landed safely on Mars in May 2008. Kalina works on writing computer code to facilitate remote control and communication with the experimental apparatus from Earth. She attended the launching of the mission in August 2007 in Florida and she regularly travels from Boston to the Flight Control Center in Arizona.

Physics majors pursue many different careers, some of which start with a graduate degree.

 

Students have been accepted into Ph.D. programs at:

 

Institution

Field of Study

Lehigh University, Pa.

Physics

Australian National University

Geophysics and Tectonics

Brandeis University, Mass.

Math

University of Virginia

Physics

Ohio State University

Physics

University of Cork, Ireland

Astronomy

UC Riverside

Math

Boston University

Physics

Caltech

Math

Others have gone into Master’s programs at:

 

Institution

Field of Study

Cornell University, NY

MBA, Mechanical Engineering, Geological Science

Stanford University, CA

Mechanical Engineering

University of Washington, WA

Technical Communication

Cal. State Fullerton

Physics

Columbia University, NY

Mining Engineering

University of Hawaii

Electrical Engineering

Cal. State Long Beach

Physics

UCLA

Biomedical Engineering

Some have gone on to Medical School

 

Institution

 

UC Irvine, CA

Nova Southeastern University, FL