Me, myself and I

I was born in Portland, Oregon  (Or-uh-gun, not Or-ee-gone), along with my twin brother who either goes by Hans or Nathan, depending on where we are.  I'll let you figure out what name our parents gave him.  Anyway, after awhile, the two of us did three things, more or less together: 1) we taught ourselves basic mechanics while bored in high school, 2) we went to college and finally took our fifteen or so years of wilderness experience (you do the math: we were 3 when we started hiking) and learned to climb, 3) we applied to grad school in physics.

Now, you may say, what happened next?  Well, funny you should ask  Hans finished up another year at UW, and worked in political science and physics (separate projects, but wouldn't it be interesting if they weren't?) After a stint (and interesting Master's thesis) at MIT, he now studies Political Science at Stanford.
I'm a grad student here at Cornell, trying to do biophysics experiments for a living.  That of course makes me sound bored and boring.  In truth, I am simply in a very droll mood, as Cake is on the tape deck, and I'm pondering free energy.

The reality is that I do far too much stuff.  When possible I'm on my bicyle or climbing.  I try to get up to Cornell's (reasonably good) climbing wall fairly often .  (Let's face it COE, your wall may be the largest east of the Mississippi, but by now we know where most of the really good climbing is in this country, and isn't east of many rivers at all).  So, I am a climber.  My greatest accomplishments have been an ascent of Cutthroat Peak, 5.8, and climbing Liberty Ridge on Mt. Rainier .  My proudest moment in the mountains, however, was as a member of Mountain Rescue.  Helping rescue lost and injured hikers, climbers, and general folk became my main activity during my last summer in Washington, and I found it extremely satisfying work.

Now five years into a Ph.D. at Cornell, my research project has changed, from a hopeful but ultimately doomed project on membrane protein crystallization to a new project aimed at understanding protein structure by applying high pressure to mutants of a particular lysozyme. I have also worked with Peter Abbamonte studying light sensitive proteins. This is fascinating work, and moreover I leared a great deal about x-ray techniques from Peter's experiments.