Current Interests

I love research. Lately I have been researching potential jobs since I need one. However, I'm overqualified for most jobs and not qualified enough (no Ph.D) for university jobs. It would seem as though overqualified people could get a job almost anywhere (i.e. overqualified = more than qualified for the position). Without one, I have virtually unlimited time to pursue my interests, which you will find have been quite varied. I've acquired many useful skills over time because of this. Now all I need to do is find a job that will allow me to make use of some of them.

Academic Interests

I'm not in school any more, and thus I no longer have access to ESRI ArcGIS with which to open up my graduate research data and continue my studies. When I was in graduate school, my research was largely GIS (geographic information systems)-based. I had two topics of interest - how vegetation types would redistribute themselves due to climate change (thesis research - .pdf, 4 MB), and how habitat fragmentation might impede or aid the process. I wanted to learn how to model these changes, to build simulations that would incorporate relevant variables and project on a map where particular vegetation types might be. I took several courses in modeling, but I never quite got to the stage where I could make a simulation for my research. This might be a good potential Ph.D project, should I go back for my Ph.D someday.

Before that, I was into biology research in college. Instead of spending 9 weeks in a summer research program, I opted to spend one week condensing about 4 years' worth of papers, notes, and bookmarks into a 24-page paper entitled The Cellular Mechanisms of Aging (.pdf, 282 KB). It's a review of all we know (as of 2004) about the genetics behind the aging process, and describes how lifespan extension research can be done with current technologies.

Physics

This has been partially supplanted by the job searching I am doing lately, but it is still in the back of my mind. This has been my long-standing interest for as far back as I could remember. I will wander between topics, such as space, electromagnetism, relativity, and fluid mechanics, but what keeps me locked in to the broader subject of physics is a fascination for forces and motion.

Basement Renovation Project

When not at work, I enjoy working on our home renovation project, which puts my mechanical skills to good use. Over the past 3 years I’ve framed walls, installed insulation, wall board, cut and laid floor tile, installed carpet, cabinets, and stone countertops. I’ve also done basic electrical work and plumbing with copper and plastic pipe. I’ve acquired these skills by teaching myself from online sources and watching the occasional contractor that we hire.

High-Speed Photography

This is one of my more hands-on projects involving my fascination with physics. I love photographing splashes because of the action captured on film, the patterns of motion involved, the beautiful fluid shapes that emerge, and I am always striving for a photo with the greatest symmetry. When we get our photo lab set up I want to do more photos that may not necessarily be high-speed, but are just as beautiful - wave patterns, vortices, thin-film interference, etc.

Nature Photography

I started doing nature photography with my husband to try to capture beautiful photos of natural scenes. It is ironic, but there can be motion even in a still image; the idea is to capture it in some way that evokes the feeling of motion.