Kurt Oughstun:  

Bachelor of Arts degree in physics & mathematics in 1972, master of science degree in optical engineering in 1974, PhD in optical physics in 1978 from The Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester. After dating since 1966 and taking her to our senior prom in 1967, I married Joyce in 1970. We moved to North Palm Beach in December 1976 when I took a position as a research scientist in theoretical physics at United Technologies, principally working on high-energy laser systems. Marcianna, our first daughter, was born in 1977 and Kristen, our second daughter, was born in 1979. Both are graduates of UVM (free tuition was my one and only perk as an academic) and Kristen earned her Masters degree in speech and language pathology from Northeastern. I transferred to UTRC (DARPA referred to UTRC as "uterus") in East Hartford, CT in 1979 and moved to Marlborough. I had a big surprise at a Halloween party at the local elementary school when a clown came up to me and asked if I remembered him from school in Newington. Although I knew all too many clowns from high school, myself included, I told him that his costume was too good of a disguise for me to recognize him. I was surprised when he told me he was Ted May as I hadn't seen him since graduation. We became friends with his family. We moved to Madison, Wisconsin in 1984 when I took a tenure-track faculty position in electrical engineering at UW, buying a house in the Village of Shorewood Hills next to Lake Mendota. It was a fantastic neighborhood adjacent to graduate student housing as our children attended a very multicultural elementary school. Our neighbors included Eric Heiden's family (speed skating gold medal-our daughters met him at their school) and Howard Temin (Nobel Prize in Medicine-we rode the bus together into the campus and often talked about research politics). Nevertheless, the Midwest is, well, the Midwest and we soon decided that we wanted to move back to the Northeast. We moved to Burlington, VT in 1987 when I took a faculty position at UVM. I was tenured in 1989 and promoted to full professor in 1992. My research at UVM in precursor ele...Expand for more