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I was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, on October 28, 1972. My family home in Edmonton was a 15 minute walk from the University of Alberta campus, so going there for my undergrad was a natural choice. I always loved math and physics in school, but after high school I had no idea what I was going to be when I "grew up". The most memorable career counselling I received was from my grade 9 physics teacher who told me: "Don't go into physics!" At that point, I had never considered physics as a career option, but I can be a bit contrary.
Following my BSc in physics, I moved to Kingston, Ontario, Canada, to do a Master's degree at Queen's University on the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO). For my PhD, I moved to Ottawa to attend Carleton University and work on the OPAL experiment at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland.
After I finished my PhD, my wife and I decided to stay in Ottawa. I am now a postdoc with the SNO group at Carleton. SNO is a very exciting experiment to work on as it recently made a very important discovery about the solar neutrinos it studies: they change from one type of neutrino to another as they travel from the Sun's core to the Earth. This discovery shows that solar neutrinos have mass!
When I'm not working on SNO or playing with Zoe, my nine-month-old baby girl, I love playing sports, listening to music, reading, and fine dining (and wining!). I used to be a serious athlete -- I fenced for Canada from 1989-1995 -- but have recently been reduced to a "weekend warrior" who plays soccer on Sundays with a bunch of other aging has-beens.
Being a physicist is a great job. Basically, I get paid to learn and to solve interesting problems, but I don't have to write tests anymore. Maybe my grade 9 physics teacher was a master of reverse psychology.
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