I am a native of southern Illinois, having lived near St. Louis in my youth. I have always loved science in all of its forms. As a child I wanted to be (in order) a paleontologist, an archaeologist, a geneticist and finally a physicist. I picked physics because my high school physics teacher got me hooked on particle physics. I wanted to smash atoms together. As an undergraduate at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, I worked with a group of physicists who were building parts of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland. I literally glued it together! As a graduate student at Boston University, I worked at Fermilab in Batavia, IL. I worked in the Control Room, often running the data acquisition system (DAQ). When I received my Master's degree in physics from BU, I decided I wanted to be a teacher, and began teaching at various community colleges in the Chicagoland area. Eventually Harper College in Palatine, IL hired me on full-time, and I have loved it here ever since. When I'm not teaching, I spend time with my husband, son and my daughter. We love to go for long bicycles rides and occasionally race motorcycles (not the kids). I also play the Star Trek Customizable Card Game and am a member of its Board of Directors.

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