I was born in the United Kingdom but moved to New Jersey when I was a baby, and then to Las Vegas when I was in second grade. We were only supposed to be here a couple years, but my dad really liked it here, so we stayed.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to study in college and I didn’t want to go to an expensive out-of-state school to figure it out. I received the Millennium Scholarship, so it seemed like I should choose between UNLV or Reno. I am a climber and Las Vegas has some of the best rock climbing in the world right outside of town, so I decided to stay here.

2009 with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics.

When I started school, multiple people told me, “It doesn’t matter what you study. You’ll never use your degree anyway.” I became determined to prove those people wrong. I started in business because I always wanted to own my own company, but then I thought, “I don’t need a business degree to do business, so maybe I should pick something else.” I took a geoscience course to fulfill the science requirements and decided to switch majors to geoscience. That major switch led to the requirement to take physics. Physics was the first time I had to work really hard to understand something, and I thought, “Okay, this is about how everything around us works. Nobody can tell me I won’t ever use this.”

I started my own company this year called Big Skeleton. We are focused on using emerging technologies to create electronic based consumer products. Our first product, which is still in the prototype phase, is an LED motorcycle vest with sensing technology to turn the lights red when the rider slows down.

I worked at Pololu Robotics and Electronics for nearly five years. The company had about 16 people when I started, so I got to take on a lot of different responsibilities as the company grew.

I recently was talking with my brother (who also has a physics degree from UNLV) about this with someone who asked that question. It’s not like you ever have to bust out Schrodinger’s equation, but physics changes how you process things. When I was getting close to graduation, I started to freak out because I didn’t know where I could get a job with my degree. When I’d talk to people about it, they’d say, “Well, with a physics degree, people will know you can solve problems and that you’re fairly smart, so you’ll be fine.” I didn’t really believe them, but once I got away from the bubble of physics people around me and had more interactions with people without science or engineering degrees, I started to see what they were talking about. You are just better at picking apart problems than most people after studying physics. In terms of actual course work, I learned basic electronics and took Electronics for Physics Majors course taught by the resident electronics expert for the physics department, Bill O’Donnell. That class wasn’t taught very often. I think I had to specifically request it and get enough students to commit to taking it for them to offer it. I still refer to the course material sometimes. Another course that comes to mind is professor David Shelton’s intermediate lab. The first semester you have to do an experiment and write a paper every two weeks. Students would get upset because after many hours of work, they would do the experiment correctly, but their paper was bad, so they’d get a bad grade. The combination of hands-on work followed by communicating technical concepts in writing comes up all the time for me. A lot of science and engineering students don’t acknowledge how important strong writing and communication skills are. Your work has no value if you can’t communicate to people what you did.

Las Vegas!

UNLV has as really great group of physics professors. My brother spent a couple years at the University of Wisconsin and he told me the physics department at UNLV was better because you can get so much individual attention from the professors. I’ve had other friends who went to Ivy League universities and mentioned that sometimes the professors are far more interested in their research than teaching. I spent many hours, sometimes well into the evening hours, working with professors to really grasp difficult concepts or to complete an experiment. I think the availability of one-on-one time with the professors was invaluable in shaping my knowledge and in turn, what I’m capable of doing.

Employers really want to see people with applicable skills. If you haven’t chosen a major yet, you should select something that is going to leave you with a marketable skill. That may not necessarily be what you are passionate about but that’s okay. There are plenty of free resources out there now to learn things you’re passionate about. In college, you pay people lots of money to teach you something, so you should use the money to learn something that is difficult to learn by yourself and fulfills a market demand. Also, Cs might get degrees, but degrees don’t get jobs, knowledge and know-how do. Employers will test your knowledge of your major when they interview you, and they will know you didn’t learn your stuff. So don’t blow stuff off and make sure you get your money’s worth out of your classes.

I am an avid rock climber and it is part of the reason I like Vegas so much. I also ride motorcycles, which is where the inspiration for the LED motorcycle vest came from.

I spent most of my time in physics terrified that I wouldn’t be able to understand the next concept, and therefore not get my degree, and then I would have spent five years in undergraduate school with nothing to show for it. I think a lot of people don’t select hard majors like physics, chemistry, math, or some of the engineering options (specifically electrical engineering and computer science) because of that fear. If you want to select one of those difficult majors, you should test your capabilities by stacking some of the harder intro courses in one semester early on and seeing how you do. I took two of the intro physics courses (which wasn’t what was recommended) in one semester. I thought if that went okay, maybe I would be able to handle four physics courses in one semester, but if I couldn’t do it, then I knew I should stay in geoscience. I did really well that semester, which gave me the confidence to move on, but the fear of failure still persisted. Looking back though, I think if you can get As or high Bs in your calculus classes and the calculus based physics courses that most of the majors I listed above are required to take, you’ve probably got what it takes to be successful in those majors.