Robert Thompson - A Brief Biography

• BSc (1987) University of British Columbia
• PhD (1994) University of Toronto

Dr. Thompson joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy as an Assistant Professor in September 1998. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2003 and served as the Chair of the Department’s Graduate Program from 2003 through 2007. Dr. Thompson is currently the Assistant Head and Undergraduate Program Director for the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Externally, he is the Chair of the Division of Physics Education of the Canadian Association of Physicists, as well as serving as Secretary-Treasurer of the Division of Atomic & Molecular Physics and Photon Interactions of the Canadian Association of Physicists. In 2007, he was awarded the CAP Medal for Excellence in Teaching, which is the pre-eminent award in Canada for post-secondary educators in physics.

After completing his Ph.D. in Laser Physics, studying coherence effects in the nonlinear generation of short wavelength radiation, Dr. Thompson went to Munich, Germany, where he spent 2.5 years as a Staff Scientist at the Max-Planck-Institut fur Quantenoptik, learning about ion trapping and studying metallofullerenes. Later he worked at Rice University in Houston, Texas, as a research associate in the Infrared Kinetic Spectroscopy lab for one year, where lasers were used to study the kinetics of combustion related processes.