>> I started here at Penn State in 2000.
And I did an undergraduate degree in physics and a minor in mathematics.
And then I graduated in 2004, and went to the University of Cambridge in England
for a Ph.D. again in physics and graduated in 2009.
And since then I've been at Santa Barbara doing research at the University of California there.
I always knew I wanted to get a Ph.D. But I don't think I knew what that meant at the time.
So I don't -- I didn't really know that I loved research until pretty much the end
of my college career here at Penn State.
I had tried several different research experiences.
Some of them were really fun and some of them were not as fun.
But it was really at the end that I decided that like I said, the act of discovery was something
that I really just couldn't pass up the chance of doing for the rest of my life.