These three photos (taken in Badlands National Park in South Dakota, Coopers Rock State Forest in West Virginia and the bighorn mountains in Wyoming respectively) pretty well describe me. I just realized (as of 4/2008) that the Badlands photo is actually flipped left to right (not that you would have known that if I hadn't told you...)
I am currently in my tenth year as a "Senior Lecturer" in the Department of Physics at the University of Arizona .
I have been working on research projects dealing with chemical equilibrium and cloud formation in brown dwarf atmospheres and on evolutionary models of brown dwarfs. I have also continued studies of the production of inertial-acoustic waves in black hole accretion disks.
I spent the previous three years (1997-2000) as a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Physics at West Virginia University.
From 1990-1996 I was a graduate student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Northwestern University. My thesis research was in computational astrophysics and my thesis abstract is available. Most of my large simulations were run on computers at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.
Photography is a big hobby of mine and here is a picture of me taken in the Bighorn Mountains by Ralph Williams. Cloud Peak lies far in the background.
As an undergraduate I attended Penn State University.
I still maintain a strong interest in astronomy.
I am also very interested in the study of the Earth's Climate and its geology.
I love the outdoors and spend as much time in the backcountry as possible. Since I have moved to Tucson, I have definitely become a "desert rat". Tucson is a hikers and bikers paradise and believe it or not your body can adjust to three months of triple digit temperatures.
I grew up near Pittsburgh so I read the Tribune Review to keep up to date.
And lastly I couldn't do without espn for general sports coverage.
April 22, 2008 - ( milsom@physics.arizona.edu)
