Simon Hale (shown in the center of the picture at right taken while he was in the REU program in 2002) graduated from James Madison University, VA in May 2004 with a B.S. in Physics. During his time at JMU, Simon completed course work in theoretical, experimental, and computational physics as well as worked in a number of different labs. His lab work included the collaborative projects of the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) detector and the MUon Lifetime ANalysis (MULAN). Simon’s longest research project started as a National Science Foundation (NSF) Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) in material science with the former Professor Rama Balasubramanian. This research continued during the school year and culminated in a poster presentation at the 10th Foresight Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology.
Simon is currently completing the Industrial Leadership in Physics, Ph.D. program at Georgetown University. He completed course work in condense matter physics and supplemental courses in business and finance. As part of the program at Georgetown he spent a year at IBM's Almaden Research Center, in San Jose, California. He worked under Dr. Barbara Jones on problems related to increasing the storage density of magnetic materials used in magnetic tapes for archival storage. Simon’s current work is in the field of theoretical condensed matter physics under his advisor Professor Jim Freericks. This work deals with utilizing dynamical mean field theory to solve problems related to thermal and electrical transport in multilayered nanodevices.
If you are a JMU Physics & Astro alum, let us know what you are doing so we can show the world how many different things you can do with a degree in physics.
