In the beginning, the Universe
was born in a gigantic explosion. Some time later, I was born
in Canada. I grew up in Calgary, Alberta, and received a
B.Sc. in physics and astronomy from the University of Calgary in
1994. I then went to graduate school at the California
Institute of Technology, to study gravitational physics under
Kip Thorne. I defended my Ph.D. in 1999, and did a postdoc at
the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee for two years.
During that time (October 15, 2000), I married Pu Chen (陈朴).
I returned to Caltech for a second postdoc starting in 2001, and
a third postdoc at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2005. In
2007 I took a faculty position at the University of Texas at
Brownsville (now the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley).
The following timeline puts these events in their proper
context. The axis scaling exponentially approaches both of its
endpoints in time (the Big Bang in one direction, the present
day in the other), according to the bilogarithmic or
"logistic" differential equation:
where 𝑙 is distance along the
timeline, 𝑡 is time since the Big
Bang, 𝑇 is the present time, and
8px and 48px are
the decade spacings as one approaches the Big Bang and the
present day, respectively.
In the beginning, the Universe
was born in a gigantic explosion. Some time later, I was born
in Canada. I grew up in Calgary, Alberta, and received a
B.Sc. in physics and astronomy from the University of Calgary in
1994. I then went to graduate school at the California
Institute of Technology, to study gravitational physics under
Kip Thorne. I defended my Ph.D. in 1999, and did a postdoc at
the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee for two years.
During that time (October 15, 2000), I married Pu Chen (陈朴).
I returned to Caltech for a second postdoc starting in 2001, and
a third postdoc at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2005. In
2007 I took a faculty position at the University of Texas at
Brownsville (now the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley).