The Parno Group

I am proud to be an organizer of the LGBT+ Physicists group, a grassroots organization devoted to supporting physicists who are members of gender and sexual minorities and improving the climate in which we all study and work. I helped lead the development of the Best Practices Guide for physics and astronomy departments. This document is filled with useful tips for making a department more welcoming of all its students, faculty and staff.

I maintain a blog of programming tips for various tools and languages useful for experimental physicists. Most entries are about ROOT or LaTeX, but I also have some material on Geant4, OS X, Autodesk Inventor, and command-line tools. The blog is updated intermittently, as I solve an unusual problem for myself or for one of my colleagues.

I have been fortunate to participate in the excellent Adopt-a-Physicist program several times since 2012. This program matches high-school physics classes with physicists for three weeks of discussion on their bulletin boards. Kids today have some truly excellent questions.

As a hobby, I have written a number of quizzes for users to play on the FunTrivia website. Many of these are about physics in particular, or science and math in general, and some have received thousands of plays. Here's a listing of my STEM quizzes on that site.

• Physics and Astrophysics:
  • "A"dventures in Physics Vocabulary
  • "B"e "B"old with Physics Vocabulary
  • Binary Stars
  • A Brief History of Particle Physics, Part I
  • A Brief History of Particle Physics, Part II
  • A "C"avalcade of Physics Vocabulary
  • Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
  • The Curious Tale of Schrodinger's Cat
  • "D"erring-"D"o with Physics Vocabulary
  • A History of Hydrogen
  • Maxwell's Equations
  • Nobel Physics 1901-1910
  • Nobel Physics 1911-1920
  • Protons and Neutrons
  • Special Relativity and the Space Patrol
  • Tools of the Laser Optics Lab
• General Science, Math and Technology:
  • Behind the Constants
  • Behind the Units: Electromagnetism
  • Behind the Units - Mechanics
  • Eloquent Experiments
  • Got Coordinates?
  • Inside a Coal-Fired Power Plant
  • Science in Antarctica
  • Superhero Science (aimed at kids)
  • A Time for Timekeeping
  • Vectors