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My homeland of Aotearoa/New Zealand, population 5M, is an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean. My ancestors on both sides of the family originated from the UK. I grew up in the coastal city of Ōtautahi/Christchurch, and amongst the mountains and rivers of Arthur's Pass National Park such as Kaimatau/Mt Rolleston and the Waimakariri. After doing an honours bachelors degree at the University of Canterbury in NZ, I did a doctorate at Stanford and postdoctoral work at Princeton and UCSB in the United States. In 2000 I joined the faculty of the University of Toronto, located in the North American Great Lakes region, where I am now a tenured full professor of physics. Overall, I find my job interesting, challenging, rewarding, and fun. Desire to help students learn physics and discover new things about the universe is a major part of what gets me out of bed every morning.
On a personal level, I love living in my adopted home city in Canada, and I do what I can to help foster a more pluralistic future here. My current interests outside university walls include (in no particular order): education, science, medicine, ecological and human sustainability, Indigenous worldviews, social justice, public resourcing of resilience, and active transportation. My hobbies include local mutual aid volunteering, four-season bicycling, hiking, snowshoeing, downhill skiing, digital photography, reading, listening to music, and playing music synthesizers. Things I detest include deceit, hypocrisy, self-aggrandizement, bigotry, and fascism. Things I prize most highly include fairness, honesty, natural scenery, and peace and quiet.
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