Academic path
I received my undergrad in Engineering Physics from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. My undergraduate thesis was supervised by Arthur B. McDonald and was on sources of radioactively pure argon for dark matter direct detection experiments, such as DEAP. I received my PhD in 2013 working with Ue-Li Pen at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) and the University of Toronto Department of Physics. I then joined the experimental cosmology group at the University of British Columbia as a Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Global Scholar and subsequently a CITA National Fellow. Since 2018 I've been an Assistant Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology and the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.
About me
I grew up on the edge of Porter's Lake, which is on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia, Canada, near Halifax. Growing up I spent a disproportionate amount of time at the beach, since I worked as a lifeguard.
I left the beauty of Nova Scotia to go to Queen's where I met my wife Maggie through the engineering program. We subsequently moved to Toronto where we lived when our son Kaito was born. We then continued our westward drift to Vancouver where our daughter Kana was born.
In the summer of 2018 we moved back east and south of the border to the Boston area where I started at MIT.
Interests
When I'm not thinking about about the universe, I enjoy sailing, hiking, camping, swimming, cycling and many other outdoor sports. I also very much like to cook (and eat).
Header images
Images in the headers are selected randomly every time a page is loaded. They were taken on various trips around the world, mostly from when I was in grad school. If you recognize where any of them were taken, I invite you to email me with a screen shot and your guess. You will be rewarded with bonus points and perpetual bragging rights.