I grew up in a small oilfield town in central California. Weekends helping my dad fix up run-down houses to sell and summers working in various oilfield and automotive jobs in hundred-degree heat convinced me of the value a desk job relative to manual labor and helped me stick it out through college (although I still fix my own house and cars, only partly from financial necessity). In a doomed attempt to be practical I gave up on my dream of working in the space program early in life, then lucked into a summer job at JPL during graduate school more or less by accident. I’ve been here ever since, working on various geophysical questions on Mars, Venus, and the satellites of Jupiter. My professional dream is to convince NASA (or whoever else might be interested) to land a network of seismic stations on Mars to explore the deep interior of that amazing planet. I have been married to my wife and partner, Mavonwe, for over 30 years and have four fascinating children who generously provide me with windows into the worlds of classical music and environmental protection.
