Allow Me to Introduce… Me

Even the most modest webpage needs to have an “About this thing that’s on the web” section, and this site is no different. In the following, we’ll operate in the third-person prose, but rest assured, this is not how Kevin talks about himself in real life. Most of the time…

The early days

Kevin grew up in a small rural community (Enon, OH) just a wee bit south of the center of Ohio (USA), sandwiched somewhere between corn fields, dollar stores, and Tractor Supply Company. During his youth, he spent his days playing in the (literal) street, running around with friends from the cul-de-sac, and getting into just enough mischief to keep to his biweekly “grounded” schedule. As he progressed through his ornery youth and education, Kevin begun to trade street sports and bonfires for textbooks and science (although not a complete trade). After finishing primary school in his hometown, Kevin enrolled in Wright State University with every intention of going to medical school (and thus winning a $500 bet with his dad, Harvey “Chuck” Dorney).

Intellectual hopsotch

Luckily for Chuck, Kevin never made the jump to medical school (despite several interviews), and instead found himself increasingly more attracted to the physical side of biology and chemistry. Although he won’t say it out loud, Kevin was deeply attracted to the quantum mechanical lectures of his Physical Chemistry professor, David Dolson, and (after earning both Biology and Chemistry degrees) he eventually decided to scratch that intellectual itch and enrolled in the Master’s program in Chemistry at Wright State under the supervision of Prof. Ioana Pavel-Sizemore.

While Kevin spent his days (and many nights) performing surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy on fun things like cancer-killing quaterny benzo-phenanthridine alkaloids, sulfur-enhanced Li-ion battery materials, and ways to introduce state-of-the-art nanoscience in secondary education, what he really learned during his Master’s was a passion for science that he never knew he had. In particular, Kevin became intimately interested in how specifically controlling, or tailoring, light could enhance our ability to detect and understand nature’s intricacies. After finishing his Master’s work, Kevin followed the chemical-physical rabbit hole further down and enrolled in the PhD program in Chemical Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Despite being a former biologist, and apparently a former chemist, Kevin continued to dive deeper into the physical side of the rabbit hole and found a home in the Katpeyn-Murnane group in JILA (formerly known as the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics). In-between camping trips, visits to national monuments, parks, and wildernesses (and the occasional triathlon), Kevin engrossed himself in the ridiculously-fast, quantum arena that collectively gives rise to our observable world and spent his PhD developing some of the most intricate (and also conceptually complex) laser sources in the world. When not dealing with his severe case of cabin fever, Kevin worked on polarization sculpted, extreme ultraviolet and x-ray lasers, opening new paradigms in how we can tailor light so that it interacts with matter much more gooder/better :-).

The Super-Fast Winding and Twisting Road Ahead

So that, friends is where the academic and career oriented sidewalk ends… For now ;). Since finishing his PhD, Kevin continues to enjoy pushing the boundaries of optical physics and creating new light sources to observe nature’s fastest and most intricate processes. Currently, his academic interests are focused on applying uniquely structured, coherent beams of EUV light to condensed matter, nanoscale systems in order to fully resolve (i.e., spectrally, temporally, and spatially) the complex dynamics that make up many of the devices and the world around us. When not in the lab, Kevin enjoys anything that can help curb his addiction to the outdoors, which at present includes the following "distractions"; running, hiking, swimming, backpacking, mountain biking, camping, cooking, and the occasional triathlon (although in truth, he probably doesn’t like this one very much).