HIGH SCHOOL

• Let's start here with McKean High School in Wilmington, Delaware, where I competed on the wrestling team.

UNIVERSITY

For my university education I started here in 1978, not surprising as a native Delawarean:

• University of Delaware  Undergraduate Research with Professors Cecil Dybowski and John Bulkowski

I began my undergraduate research in 1980, so I've doing chemical research for 23 years (as of 2003).

SUMMER JOBS

• For the summers during my UD years, I earned money for college as a laborer rebuilding track for Octoraro Railways (OCTR), a shortline railroad. I worked the usual set of jobs for a young person, including motor newspaper delivery route of 71 miles, lawn mowing/care, dish washer at a steak house, house painting, and a lab glassware washer. None have the cachet of working as a laborer on a railroad. We had some machinery (called an SG machine as I remember) but it went down quite often, so manual labor was the order of the day. As a result, I learned how to pound railroad spikes. It is interesting that I am of Chinese descent so you can I was a coolie for awhile. It is possible to spike all day long. Here is newspaper column that describes using the wrist rather than the shoulders. However, I found that with "sprint spiking" i.e. ten or fewer spikes, one was better off bending the knees with each swing. It was possible to drive a spike in 4-6 swings with a 8.5 lbs maul into pine ties. Flicking the wrists was slower requiring 6-10 swings per spike. The wrist flickers used shorter maul handles (24-30"). We used sledge hammer handles of 36". Here is page on some of the tools of the trade. 

• OCTR is out of business (another link) but I like to stop and see the old railyards in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania when I am in the area. It became  part of the Delaware Valley Railway, (another link). I recognize a lot of the places in the photographs. It looks like they have gone under too. It seems as if some of the track is being used as storage by a Brandywine Valley Railway Inc. Here is a link that indicates that DVR is still around in some form.

• History of the track & Link 2 - It was built pre-Civil War, but I understood that it was rebuilt for heavier traffic during the Civil War to shuttle supplies for the Union Army from the powder mills of Delaware and the factories of Philadelphia to Port Deposit, Maryland. None of these links describe that though. Another history link. Date spikes (really copper nails) are used to indicate when that track was last rebuilt. I never came across a pre-1900 one, but found a few 1912's. I wished I had kept them. Here is a picture of the one of the engines (also pictured to the left). That is engine #3 which was not there during my tenure with OCTR. A faded B&O, (Baltimore & Ohio) insignia is barely visible. As I remember, engines 1 and 2 were built during or just after WWII and was used by the USAF through the 1960's, hence the blue color. I guess Octoraro adapted that color to save repainting costs. The boxcars though were a painted in a maroon color. It's nice to see that engine #3 is in a museum, even though it looks like it needs restoration work. I remember riding in the cab one hot summer day with the windows wide open when we hit a huge bees nest. That wasn't pretty. The recent floods in the summer of 2003 has caused quite a bit of damage. Picture 1, 2, 3.

• One of the members of the infamous "Johnston gang" worked on that railroad. A newspaper article on the gang including the leader's attempt at an escape in the late 90's. A Sean Penn movie on that gang "At Close Range"

• I've found that others have the experience of working summers constructing or rebuilding track 1, 2, 3, 4. Here is link to Mark Priest a university art faculty member with rail building experience. A link to his art work. Most of the stories and paintings of Prof Priest look and sound very familiar to me.

• Gandy Dancers - I'd heard of this from one of the old-timers at OCTR. We didn't sing to the labor but here's a link to the "dancers." Their music was a form of country/blues/black R&B. Other links 1, 2, 3, 4.

GRADUATE SCHOOL

I didn't venture far for grad school, went from being a Blue Hen to a Nittany Lion.

• Penn State University,  1983-87 Graduate Research with Professor Joseph Jordan (Deceased 1991)

I plan on starting a webpage in his memory sometime in the near future. My Ph.D. dissertation was on electrochemical solar cells.

I originally thought about doing a foreign post-doc, well I got a virtual one by moving on to Texas (albeit another football school).

• Texas A&M University, 1987-89 Postdoc with Professor Charles R. Martin (now with University of Florida)

Lot's of good memories of Aggieland. I could never figure out if being called a "Yankee Carpetbagger" was a severe insult though. I worked on the fabrication of microstructures with Chuck. I see from his webpage he has moved on to nanostructures.

FIRST FACULTY POSITION 1989-93

• I spent a few years in New Jersey at Seton Hall University before I took another stop in the academic world which led me on to Arizona.

RESEARCH SCIENTIST 1994-97

• University of Arizona, 1994-97 Research Scientist with Professor Quintus Fernando