About Me

CV

My web-ready CV is available in PDF format.  Additional information is available upon request.
Ryan Westafer’s CV

i * (About Me)

Fascinations

I can become intensely interested in almost anything; I love to ask “why,” to question the bounds of facts, and to ponder the paradoxical.
I find our world is impossibly both chaotic and orchestrated; a balanced engineering marvel. From what we can only see (and the worlds best scientists and equipment can only “observe”) as arbitrary, emerges the most impossibly beautiful creation.

Educational Journey

I’ve now received two degrees (BS CmpE and MS ECE) from Georgia Tech. This outstanding university transformed me from a curious and industrious teenager into a professional.

Now I’m continuing down the path toward a Ph.D., with the ultimate goal of becoming a professor. I’ve had some truly wonderful and inspirational teachers over the years, and I will strive to sustain the cause. I think teaching is a very rewarding complement to a lifetime of learning, and it is to some extent necessary if we are to sustain societal progress. Of course, I aim to participate in some improvements along the way.

These days you can find me working in the MAG lab in the Microelectronics Research Center (MiRC) at Georgia Tech or sitting at a desk with stacked books. There’s a duality to my work. While I can fix cryopumps, recondition a water-filled electron beam evaporator, and manipulate hair-thin wires under a microscope, I really enjoy digging at the fundamentals. This is typically analysis of things like: methods and assumptions, or necessary paradoxes and tautologies. For me the balance is important. Intellectual stimulation complements the rote skill development.

Desire to Serve

After some self-study resolving a few gripes with modern physics (a la Smolin), I decided I should focus on applied physics and engineering. Whether I’m looking in detail at the newest leaves of the tree of science or pondering its trivial root, this is not to be my focus. While physics is beautiful with all its trivial symmetries and blindly broken ones, our world, however, is fundamentally “broken.” On the large scale we cannot reverse time, and sweeping changes occur whether or not we act.

We have global problems to solve: disease, potable water, pollution, conflict, etc. Our shrinking/mixing world increasingly brings these issues to everyone. While this phenomenon raises our concern, it also improves our awareness and ability to act.

Family

Both my parents, John and Anita, and both my siblings, Lauren and Michael, studied at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. All of them are or will be medical doctors. I’m the rogue engineer and must confess I have a lot of respect for “the kind of doctor that actually helps people.” It’s amusing, but no worries – I help people in different ways – e.g. solving problems to reduce the pulling-out of hair.

My amazing wife Kristin and I make our happy home in Atlanta, GA – along with our 6 “rescued” pets. Kristin is a veterinarian (yes, another doctor in the family), so we take good care of our critters.

About My Blog

My blog is a journal of things which I find interesting; typically these are things I figure few people want to hear about in daily conversation. I often record a rant or a minute detail I’ve observed. The content reminds me of my journey as I look back upon the path I’ve taken and choose the way ahead. I’m striving not to become homogenized via Twitter and all of that, so I post this journal as my own unintrusive experiment in shared intro- and extro-spection.