I retired in early 2010. Prior to that my job was to do research in particle physics theory, which means thinking about what we do and do not yet understand about the smallest things we know of, the quarks, and how they interact with one another to make everything we see and determine its properties. The job of a theorist is to continually seek new ideas that can add to our understanding and diminish our ignorance. I always worked in collaboration with others, collaborating with many different physicists from around the world. In the later years of my career I was involved with the planning of a major experimental facility known as a B-Factory and the particle detector for it, and in interpreting its results over the many years that it operated at SLAC. Experimental physicists from 10 different countries were a part of this collaborative effort, and the theoretical effort to help define its goals and then interpret its results involved people from all those countries and more. Part of the joy of doing particle physics is that you live in a very international community and have friends all over the world! Find out more about my work on Wikipedia.

Throughout my career as a researcher I was also involved in a variety of outreach projects. For many years I ran a program that brings undergraduate students from all over the US to SLAC for summer research internships with our scientists. Our focus was to offer that opportunity to students from groups under-represented in the physics research community, which (unfortunately, still) includes both women and people of color. (This opportunity to spend a summer at SLAC still exists.) I also ran summer programs for physics teachers to learn about forefront physics.

Since my retirement the focus of my time and efforts is the improvement of science education. I led the National Academy study that laid out a vision for new Science Standards in “A Framework for K-12 Science Education”. Standards based on this document have now been adopted by over 40 states. Framework is also influencing science teaching and learning in many other countries. I work in multiple ways to support those implementing new standards to understand the vision and make take on the long term work that is needed to implement it – in teacher education, in the development of curriculum materials, in statewide testing programs, and in local schools and districts across the country.

I no longer have a job, but I do have plenty to do to keep me lively in my old age! My experiences as a scientist, and as a science educator are critical for this work. The main message of this work is that science is not just the understanding that have been developed, but also the practices by which those ideas were developed and the ways of thinking that help one engage effectively in those practices (which we called cross cutting concepts in the Framework). Science learning should likewise involve all three of these dimensions, rather than, as it all too often has been, the learning of many, many disconnected facts, with no understanding of where they came from, or how to apply this knowledge to solve problems in the world.