Brief History of Dr. Nelson

Dr. Eric Nelson joined the Upper School faculty as a physics teacher in the fall of 2003. Dr. Nelson is a returning Bay Area resident who graduated from Los Gatos High School in 1976.

Dr. Nelson received his Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1988 for his work in the field of chromospherically active cool stars and stellar systems. The full text of the dissertation is available on-line: Power Spectra Decomposition of 36 RS CVn UBV Photometric Light Curves from the First Two Years of the Automatic Photoelectric Telescope.

From 1984 to 1997 Dr. Nelson worked as a research scientist and technology fire jumper^tm for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). In this cross-disciplinary corporate research and development environment he worked, primarily, in the areas of nuclear test ban treaty verification, environmental compliance monitoring, theatre medical technologies, space shuttle medical systems, and advanced information technologies including educational technolgy R&D. These fields required a broad as well as detailed understanding of physics, engineering, management, robotics, software development, remote sensing, signal processing, artificial intelligence, as well as other technical fields. From 1979 to 1988, he worked at a number of astronomical observatories. For example: the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in capacities ranging from data aide to visiting scientist.

As an undergraduate in college at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, New Mexico, Dr. Nelson (unknowingly) began his teaching career by opening the school Astronomy Club telescope in 1977 to the general public. Since that time, he has been working to promote and improve public science education and awareness.

Over the years I have been intimately involved in a wide range of projects that span multiple disciplines (I just could never get around to specializing), and through it all I always managed to teach. Below are some of the projects I worked on over the years that have additional information associated with them.

• Ideal Air Blast Above Ground Nuclear Test Simulations
• Nuclear Thermal Radiation Simulators (TRS)
• White Sands Missle Range (WSMR) Large Blast Thermal Simulator (LBTS)
• Nuclear Blast and Thermal Effects (Minor Scale Event)
• NASA Life Sciences Laboratory Equipment (Shuttle Qualified)
• Mobile Medical Monitor (M3)
• Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals
• Human Performance Response Time Studies
• Defense Nuclear Agency TRS Data Analysis Software
• Time Series Analysis Environment Software
• Capilla Peak Observatory
• Very Large Array Radio Observatory
• Balloon Born Gamma Ray Observatory
• Kitt Peak National Observatory

I was cofounder, CTO, and member of the board of directors of Valiant Technologies, makers of RayCrete, SPAK and the EZ-Poly family of adhesive fillers.