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I was born in Trail, British Columbia, Canada, on March 3, 1963. Friends call me Bun, though my parents, Claudio and Luigia Pavan, still call me "nini" ("little one"). Mamma and Papa emigrated in the 50s from northeast Italy, and worked as a cook and a carpenter, respectively. Trail is a very small, remote border town on the Columbia River. It was a great place to grow up. My friends and I would leave the house early and return only after our fill of hockey, soccer, fishing, hiking, hunting, and/or pellet gun fights, or when our mothers' whistles announced dinner ready. Those were the days.
 In 1981 I graduated from J. Lloyd Crowe secondary school and went to the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver. There began some years of unbounded dormitory revelry and intense competition as a goalkeeper for the varsity soccer team. Academically, I was privileged to be in the excellent Engineering Physics program, graduating in 1986, followed by a Master's degree in Eng Phys (1990), finishing with a PhD (1995) working in the field of pion-nucleon physics at the TRIUMF lab (near UBC), under the patient tutelage of UBC Professor Garth Jones.
After a few months at the University of Trieste, Italy (where my spoken Italian did not return quickly enough to prevent a terribly embarassing seminar), I began a post-doc in 1995 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA with Prof. Aron Bernstein, working together on pion-, gamma, and electron-nucleon experiments around the world. Between taking sips from the MIT firehose, I managed to gain friends from far-flung places, and a new appreciation for wine, food, and piano. MIT and Boston rock.
I returned to TRIUMF with the CHAOS group, again doing pion-nucleon experiments. In 2003, after decommissioning the CHAOS spectrometer, my interests moved towards TRIUMF's nuclear astrophysics program, and to public education and outreach as TRIUMF's first Outreach Coordinator. Somehow, someway, I stumbled upon the job for me: experiencing science at its best, and explaining its wonders to others.
 2005 poses exciting challenges. Our research group is designing and building a novel cylindrical GEM-based ion/time-projection chamber called TACTIC, and my outreach cup runneth over, with a myriad of events to plan, including plays, guest speakers, a TRIUMF Open House, and much more, all in celebration of the World Year of Physics 2005. I will still play soccer with my (now old) buddies, study piano, and work on straightening my slice on the golf course. Oh, and if time permits, marry my fiancée. Stay tuned to Quantum Diaries to see how this all works out.
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