Where Are Our Students Now?

Jorge Polanco [or Jorge Polanco Miralbés] (1995) is an independent engineer manging data collection teams in Guatemala. He earned an M.S. in reliability engineering at Galileo University after returning from SSU to his native country.

Jeff Porter (1983) is now working in the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He formerly did high energy physics research in the Center for Experimental Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics at the University of Washington. Before that he was database leader for the Solenoidal Tracker At RHIC experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory. He earned his Ph.D. in physics in 1995 at the University of California, Davis while participating in the DiLepton Spectrometer experiment.

Robert Porter (1971) is a retired international business and product development consultant living in Sebastopol. He earned his Ph.D. in psychophysiology at World College and University, UNESCO, in 1982.

Austin Powell (2011) has been promoted to data scientist with Kaiser Permanente in the Bay Area. He earned a master's degree in statistics at San Jose State University in 2016.

Kim Powers (1984) is a senior software engineer with Rockwell Collins in the Bay Area. He earned an M.S. in physics at the University of Arizona.

John Proud (1973) taught physics and astronomy for many years at Punahou School in Honolulu, where he chaired the science department and was director of the school’s challenge ropes course. He earned a masters degree in educational administration at the University of Hawai’i.

Peter Quinliven (2004) is the principal of Future Concepts in Olivehurst, CA. He also works for PG&E. Formerly an energy analyst with the California Energy Commission, he earned an M.S. in physics at the University of California, Davis in 2005.

Ryan Quitzow-James (2005) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. He earned a Ph.D. in physics at the University of Oregon in 2016. He is a member of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) team that published the first direct detections of gravitational radiation. The team has received many awards, including the Breakthrough Prize in 2016, the Breakthrough of the Year Award from Physics World in 2016 and 2017, and the Einstein Medal in 2017. Leaders of the team have received several additional prizes, including the Nobel Prize in physics in 2017.

Johannes Raab (1979) works in information security with a large insurance company in Munich, Germany. He earned a Ph.D. in experimental particle physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1987 and did postdoctoral research at CERN, the University of Mainz, and the Max Planck Institute.

Roberto Ramirez (1972) has retired after teaching mathematics and physics for many years at Windsor High School and bilingual mathematics and science in the Department of Chicano and Latino Studies at SSU. Honored with a $15,000 Outstanding High School Teachers of America award by the Carlston Family Foundation in 2001, he was one of SSU’s Distinguished Alumni in 2002.

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