I am a theoretical and computational physicist. For many years, I worked on electronic transport in disordered materials. Essentially, this entailed using a theoretical/computational approach to problems in quantum mechanics of interacting systems. I wrote a number of papers on that subject. (See my curriculum vitae – publications 1-22, presentations 1-25, and all externally funded grants.) In the last few years, however, I have become interested in problems in different areas where an interdisciplinary approach might be beneficial. Indeed, I am presently looking into two other types of problems:

i. Coccidioidomycosis. I study some aspects of the epidemiology of coccidioidomycosis (valley fever), an air-borne fungal disease that afflicts much of the southwestern US and other parts of the Americas. My main interest is in finding out what is the effect of climate fluctuations on the fluctuations of valley fever incidence. My co-workers (Charlie Zender and Sam Behseta) and I have published three papers on the subject: 1) Climate controls on valley fever incidence in Kern County, California, International Journal of Biometeorology 50, 174 (2006), PDF, doi: 10.1007/s00484-005-007-6; 2) Statistical modeling of valley fever data in Kern County, California, International Journal of Biometeorology 51, 307 (2007) PDF, doi:10.1007/s00484-006-0065-4; 3) Fluctuations in climate and incidence of Coccidioidomycosis in Kern County, California: a review, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1111, 73 (2007), PDF, doi: 10.1196/annals.1406.028. The present status of my research on valley fever is also summarized in the abstract of a talk I gave at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University.

ii. Radiative transfer. I have participated in research on Mie resonances in aerosols. Here, the issue is ascertaining how much water droplets absorb energy. This is interesting because it is directly relevant to figuring out the extent to which clouds absorb solar and terrestrial radiation. Charlie Zender and I have a paper on this: Solar absorption by Mie resonances in cloud droplets, J. Quant. Spectrosc. Radiat. Transfer 98, 112 (2006), PDF, doi: 10.1016/j.jqsrt.2005.05.084.