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I was born in Austin, MN and grew up on a farm near Oakland, MN. On our farm, we raised corn and soybeans. I attended school in Austin, and graduated from Austin High School in 1991. |
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After high school, I attended Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, MN. Gustavus is a small liberal arts college with a Swedish Lutheran heritage. I majored in Physics and was part of Curriculum II (an integrated liberal studies core focusing on Western culture and tradition). I also studied Russian and played French horn in the Gustavus Band. |
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After graduating from Gustavus, I took a year off from school and worked at the Hormel Institute in Austin, MN. The Hormel Institute is a research branch of the University of Minnesota. I worked in the Biophysics group, and my job involved isolating proteins from pig pancreas. |
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I started graduate school in Materials Science at MIT in the fall of 1996. My Ph.D. research was co-advised by Prof. Tim Swager (Chemistry) and Prof. Vladimir Bulović (Electrical Engineering, Laboratory of Organic Optics and Electronics). I defended my thesis titled “Formation of In-Plane Crystals of Molecular Organic Semiconductors” in February 2004. My thesis research included the development of a room temperature technique to grow elongated, millimeter scale organic crystals. |
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While at MIT, I spent two summers (1999 and 2000) at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY. I worked on polymeric and pentacene field-effect transistors in the Organic Electronics group. |
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After completing my Ph.D., I spent a year working as a Research Scientist at the Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering at North Dakota State University (Fargo, ND). My research projects at CNSE were in the areas of organic spintronics and the miniturization of chemical sensors. |
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I am currently a research assistant professor in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Utah. My research interests include organic electronics and optoelectronics, and micro- and nanofabrication. |
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