I was born on June 28, 1968 in La Jolla, CA. I grew up in McLean, VA, located just outside of Washington, DC. My parents still reside in McLean.

After almost 4 years working as a process development engineer at the Clorox Technical Center in Pleasanton, CA, where I developed processing capabilities for new home cleaning products, I have moved on to Silicon Valley. I am a Senior Modeling Engineer for Novellus Systems, a maker of semiconductor manufacturing equipment. I do Computational Fluid Dynamics modeling, primarily using Fluent software. I am a Chemical Engineer and member of American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE).

I attendedCornell University , where I studied Chemical Engineering and graduated with a BS degree in 1990. Click here to hear the Cornell Alma Mater. This tune is also the toast song for Alpha Phi Omega Service Fraternity, with which I have been involved since 1987.

After graduating from Cornell, I proceeded to graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley where I completed my PhD in the Department of Chemical Engineering in May 1996. My thesis work was on "Diffusion Driven Coarsening of Foam in Porous Media," advised by Prof. Clay Radke and Prof. Tad Patzek, who is in the Department of Petroleum Engineering. For more information on my graduate research, see my research page. The picture on the right shows Cal romping on Stanford in the 1994 Big Game.

I was married to my wife, Shelli Bodnar, in 1996. The wedding was held at the AD White House (left) on Cornell's campus, with a reception in the Statler Hotel. We have two cats, Chaco and Angel. Shelli is a physician in a Family Practice in Los Altos.

We bought a house in San Jose in May, 1998. Click here to see pictures of the house.

Here is an action shot from the 1998 Pleasanton coed volleyball league.