I like laboratories! I teach the department’s Junior Lab courses as well as our electronics courses and upper level optics. I try to make labs in these courses as open ended as possible. Students get lots of practice in experiment design, the art of keeping a Lab Notebook, error analysis, curve fitting, and how to present scientific results in written and oral form.
I am a condensed matter experimentalist. My current interests focus on thin film magnetism. My students and I prepare samples with our department’s sputter-deposition equipment and we do structural characterization primarily with the AMSEC x-ray reflectivity apparatus. We do magnetic measurements with a Sandercock-type Brillouin Light Scattering apparatus and a Magnetooptical Kerr Effect setup. We also have two closed cycle He refrigerators for electrical transport and optical measurements in the range 10-300K. We collaborate with other WWU faculty for measurements such as Mossbauer Spectroscopy, VSM, STM/AFM, and SEM.
BSc, University of Manitoba (1982)
MSc, McGill University (1984)
PhD, McGill University (1989)