Alumni

George Mason University Physics and Astronomy alumni are the best. From all walks of life and professional careers come our alumni willing to speak with students, to give presentations, and to answer any emails with whatever questions might be asked. These outstanding alumni invite you to contact them and take advantage of their experiences to provide you resources.

Lennie Burke
I've recently retired from my first career. I was a civilian employee of the Navy for 34 years. Here's an overview of my job history: Student Trainee, Naval Research Lab 1968-1970 Research Physicist, Naval Research Lab 1968-1975 Electronics Engineer, Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) 1975-1988 Technical Director and member of Senior Executive Service, NAVAIR, 1988-1994 Director, Open Systems Joint Task Force, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1994-1998 Department Head, Training and Simulation Systems, NAVAIR 1998-2002. My wife and I have started a small business. [Return to Table]

Glenn Slagle (gscordlesspower@aol.com)
Glenn Slagle is president of the Cordless Power Corporation The CPC was founded in 1973 to conduct advanced research in applications of cordless electric power. Building on two patents, the company develops products in three areas: (a) video imaging metal detectors, (b) wireless power/levitation systems, and (c) special video animation productions. The video imaging metal detectors originally used for airport screening are now used in mostly industrial testing. [Return to Table]

Ronald Bax (Ronald.bax@siemens.com)
I'm the analog design manager for a major medical ultrasound equipment manufacturer. I supervise and assist the development of extremely low noise transmitter, receiver and power subsystems. We design the outgoing analog path between the transmit DSP's digital-to-analog converter arrays and the transducer. On the return path, we design the circuitry from the transducers back to the analog-to-digital converter arrays feeding the receiver DSP's. We routinely deal with 160 DB dynamic signal range and picosecond phase/time jitter. Interested in hiring GMU grads when they start hiring again. [Return to Table]

Claire Brown (brownc@software.org)
After spending 20 years working as a software engineer, systems engineer, and project manager in the field of signal processing systems development, I moved into consulting and training work. I teach several courses dealing with the management of software system development projects. I also manage a consulting project and serve in a quality assurance role and internal process development role. [Return to Table]

Nancy Jackett (njackett@uni-solar.com)
What I do for a living: Research & Development of thin film photovoltaic. tudy thin film processing techniques including vacuum deposition, lamination, and printed circuit board technologies. Use computer as a tool for data logging, analysis, and experimental design. My company might be interested in hiring GMU physics graduates. [Return to Table]

Carlos Cruz (ccruz@dao.gsfc.nasa.gov)
For the last 3 years I have been involved in the design, development, and testing of scientific codes that deal with climate, numerical weather prediction, data assimilation, and other Earth science applications. More specifically I have been involved in a variety of projects the latest one being the Earth System Modelling Framework My company is constantly looking for new employees specially physics graduates! [Return to Table]

Kevin Hutton (khutton@yeo.org)
I am currently working for Y.E.O. (Young Entrepreneurs' Organization) as an IT Manager. I handle everything technology here at YEO. I am responsible for our network equipment (Cisco, Linux and FreeBSD) and all Windows and Linux based servers and workstations. I am also President and Co-Founder of NORVA Technologies Inc. We are a wireless and wired network company. We provide planning installation, augmentation and securing of wireless and wired networks. We also handle Windows Infrastructure planning and implementation along with building firewalls with Open Source or setting up proprietary security devices. [Return to Table]

Bradley Smith (bsmith@genevasi.com)
I have been doing quite well since leaving the GMU Physics Department. After graduation, I bumped around a little and ended up doing business software application development. In order to enhance my newly chosen career, I completed a Masters Degree in Computer and Information Systems from Hood College. I am currently working for Geneva Software and have been for the past 7 years. Geneva is a small software development firm doing custom application development primarily for the Department of State. My current role with Geneva is Senior Software Architect. In this role I oversee the design of most all applications being developed at Geneva. I design the base classes that all of our applications are built on. I work to ensure that developers are following a strict set of coding standards that we enforce, via code reviews and continued developer training. While I am not able to use directly the knowledge I learned, the problem solving skills I developed while studying Physics have proved invaluable to my career growth. If I were to do it all again I would certainly choose Physics. I see many co-workers who studied more directly Computers Science, while they have a greater understanding of the languages and concepts cannot solve the difficult problems that often arise when developing software. [Return to Table]

Mark Nagurney (kievhiker@starpower.net)
I teach at 2 community colleges, electronics, technical math, operating systems, computer repair, and networking. I fix and upgrade computers and networks for customers from Baltimore to Northern Va. I have an interest in installing voice activated software for a variety of customers who need it. Would our organization be interested in hiring GMU physics graduates? Some of the positions we have regularly available require strong math, electronics, some IT and communication skills. All of these should be in the repetoire of a physics graduate from Mason. And I would recommend that they should apply for these types of openings at our organization when advertised. [Return to Table]

Keith Schur
Mr. Schur, an Associate at Booz·Allen, received a M.S. degree in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University in 1998 and B.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Physics from George Mason University in 1991. While at Booz Allen Mr. Schur has performed software engineering and systems engineering functions for the development of tactical handheld command and control and wireless systems for the U.S. military. In these roles Mr. Schur has performed requirements and systems analysis, designed software architecture, and developed software code for wireless technologies to support the needs of dismounted and mobile combatants. In addition, Mr. Schur performed a vulnerability analysis of the public switched telephone-signaling (SS7) network for a government client. [Return to Table]

Amin Jazaeri (amin@physics.gmu.edu)
I am currently a physics Instructor with the department of physics and a Ph.D. candidate in Computational Sciences at GMU. [Return to Table]

Jarek Tuszynski (Jaroslaw.W.Tuszynski@saic.com)
Research and algorithm development on variety of different fields. These are projects I worked on so far: * Metabolic pathways analysis using data from Carbon 13 labeling experiments * Automatic metabolic pathway drawing * Modeling of sources of error in next generation micro-arrays * Image analysis: using pattern recognition, image segmentation and classification. Purpose of this project is automatic scanning of gamma-ray images of trucks at border crossings for illicit cargo. Part of VACIS technology * Analysis of SELDI spectra of prostate cancer patients in order to build classifiers able to distinguish cancerous and healthy samples. * Micro-array image processing * Anomaly detection in hyper-spectral images My company might be interested in hiring GMU graduates. [Return to Table]

Darren Lewis (Darren_Lewis@sra.com)
I am currently a scientific programmer on a contract with the U.S. government. During the eight years since finishing at GMU I have worked as both analyst and software engineer on a wide variety of projects. My company is interested in GMU physics grads. [Return to Table]

Tom Johnson (fiochmhar@yahoo.com)
I proactively maintain the integrity of a 300+ server data center. [Return to Table]

Cindy Dion-Schwarz (cindyds@erols.com)
Since graduating in 1988 from Mason, I spent 1 1/2 years at Duke studying Mathematics, and then switched back to Physics at UMD. While I was there, I worked in a collaboration that included Bob Ellsworth. My thesis was in experimental high energy particle Astrophysics (Jordan Goodman was my advisor). I graduated in 1995, spent two years as a post-doc at the Naval Research Lab, and in 1998 switched careers and began working at the Institute for Defense Analyses, which does hire physics grads who are U.S. citizens. [Return to Table]

Sean Parker
What I do? - well I'm mostly a software engineer, working on physics related codes. I've done anything from enterprise-type work, databases, etc, to modeling atmospheric transport, molecular, photo, chemistry. I've utilized a few methods, such as newton-raphson iterations on jacobian matrix, large-matrix inversion, line-of-sight integration, etc. [Return to Table]

Colleen McDuffie (chmcduffie@erols.com)
I currently am taking time off from my career as an intellectual property attorney to spend time with my children. [Return to Table]

Nausheen Shah (nausheen@uchicago.edu)
In 3rd year of physics Ph.D. program. Intend to specialize in either General Relativity or string theory. [Return to Table]

Erik Melis (emelis@gmu.edu)
As Associate Director of Financial Aid, in addition to counseling students and their families about the opportunities in financial aid, I also oversee the application systems side of our operation. I ensure that all the computer interfaces and software systems that we use are up to date, tested, and fully implemented. I am currently the Financial Aid Team Leader for the Student Information System conversion to the SCT Banner platform. I actually pursued my degree in Physics at GMU, not in order to work in the field, but because I just enjoy physics, astronomy, and the mathematics behind the sciences. While pursuing the degree, I worked as a student worker in the Financial Aid Office, decided I REALLY enjoy working in an academic setting, and after graduation, decided to continue working in the financial aid profession. I am currently actively pursuing my Masters degree in Information Systems at GMU. [Return to Table]

Keiko Teramoto (pa-teramoto@itohpat.co.jp)
I am currently working for a Japanese patent law firm in Tokyo. After graduation, I came back to Japan, took the Japanese Patent Bar, and I became a Japanese patent attorney. Our firm handles advanced technologies, including semiconductor, control system for automobile, electronic circuit, imaging technology, etc. The physics education I received at GMU is useful for my job. [Return to Table]

Mary Ewell (Mary@physics.gmu.edu)
In addition to teaching physics at GMU, I am a predoctoral fellow at Carnegie through the NASA Astrobiology Institute. [Return to Table]

Dana Johnson (djohnson@skybitz.com)
I'm currently Director of RF Development for a small, asset tracking firm located in Dulles, VA. Previously I worked for a local defense contractor designing antennas and RF systems for airborne applications. In the the late 90's I decided to leave my cozy, big company job and test the commercial waters. I joined a small, startup firm that was trying to develop a cheap, point to multi-point, smart antenna system to deliver last mile and carrier class(?) wireless, broadband access. Unfortunately venture capital market instability and other pressures left that dream unfulfilled. In 2000 I joined my current employer and am responsible for all RF and microwave systems that we use with our satellite based, asset tracking service. Most of what we use has been designed and developed internally. Our service is an exciting blend of fairly sophisticated hardware (mobile terminal and satellite gateway channel units), firmware, software, and web content (see our web site www.skybitz.com ). Wish us luck! [Return to Table]

Ernie Chapman (echapman@northropgrumman.com)
I'm sure that this company would be interested in hiring GMU physics grads. At the moment I am performing software engineering duties for applications related to Geographic Information Systems (GIS), for Department of Defense customers, using Java. I have concentrated mostly on terrain analysis and also visualization of temporal data. I'm also pursuing a Systems Engineering Masters Degree from Old Dominion University. [Return to Table]

Steven Meier(steven.meier@nro.mil)
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