Professional Career

After receiving my Ph.D. in Physics, I joined the faculty of the Department of Geophysics at the University of Illinois at Urbana as a young professor.  Teaching and research in a University environment had been my objective, and I was not disappointed with that decision. Although publish or perish is not a great academic ideal, I followed that required path and received academic tenure in 1976 becoming an Associate Professor. 

In 1982 I received an invitation to join Chevron Research Company in La Habra, California.  We were ready for a life change and late that year we packed our bags and went West to sunny, often smoggy, Southern California.  As I was leaving Illinois, I knew that the World Championship was secure and that the move West would not affect the final outcome.

The last seven years we have been living in the San Francisco area.  Part of this time I have worked with the US Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board in Arlington, VA, whose mission is to advise Congress on the Department of Energy's progress in evaluating Yucca Mountain Nevada as a potential site for the geologic disposal of Nuclear Waste. The past year I have been working on this problem as an independent consultant.

Several achievements during my career were:

In 1983 I received the Basic Research Award from the U. S. Committee on Rock Mechanics for a research paper published in Water Resources Research v.18, 1982 on the topic of geologic disposal of nuclear waste.

I co-authored a book "Introduction to The Physics of Rocks" Hermann Ed., Paris, (in French), with Professor Yves Gueguen, Strasbourg University.  The English version was published in 1994 by Princeton University Press.   

I have published fifty four technical papers, twenty three of which are in referred professional journals.  I am a member of the American Geophysical Union and the American Physical Society.

I thoroughly enjoyed being a Visiting Professor at the Institut De Physique Du Globe, Universite' Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France, during the Summer of 1992, and at the Department of Land, Air, and Water Resources, U. of  California, Davis, during the Fall of 1993.