Excitons confined in quantum wells

This image is excitons confined in two-dimensional quantum wells inside a semiconductor. I worked closely with Sam Carter. We started off with multiple tangents about how to visualize this subject matter. I was working originally with Adobe Illustrator, but the discussion about the visuals quickly migrated to 3D schemes. I recently got my copy of Maya, and I thought it might be good project to work in Maya. The dots/spheres are very specifically arranged (mathmatically spaced from Matlab data) which reflect density and potential energy levels of the excitons. I was just very excited about making Maya be very detail oriented with the data and objects. Maya crashed a ton of times due to the heavy nature of the spherical geometry, but I got (3D) wise and converted all the polygon geometry to particle data which seemed to help with the computer processing. I didn't have my work horse Mac Pro yet and I only had my PC which basically only has good amount of memory and a 3d gamers graphic card (which mean slow slow when it comes to processing rendering and even displaying)

• Clients: Sam Carter, Steve Cundiff Group


• Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Jun Ye Photo Shoot

I had the pleasure of taking Jun Ye's photograph in front of his newly completed next-generation atomic clock. His lab is jam pack with lasers and multiple experiments running almost 24/7. I had to come to his lab in the early morning when non his experiments were not booting up to do their routines just yet. I brought my lights, but it was very difficult since there wasn't that much physical room in his lab and there were not many outlet plugs. But I got a good setup and Jun Ye was doing very good with me when I he posed for me.

• Client: Jun Ye Group


• Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article, NIST news article

Rosalba Perna Photo Shoot

I was asked to take photo's of several scientist that were 29^th Street Community Outreach Activities. Rosalba Perna was one of the astrophysicist I needed to photograph, so I went to her office with my camera and lights. The shoot went pretty well

• Client: Rosalba Perna

Mathis Weber Photo Shoot

I was asked to take photo's of several scientist that were 29^th Street Community Outreach Activities. Mathis Weber was one of the scientist I needed to photograph, so I went to his lab with my camera and lights. The shoot went pretty well

• Client: Weber Research Group

X-ray Excitation

I worked very closely with Dr. Arvinder Sandhu and Etienne Gagnon on developing figures and cover art for Science Magazine. I had a week to develop a cover image using Maya as my 3D tool set.

My image was not selected for the front cover since Science magazine already used an attosecond science cover image in their previously issue. Apparently its Science’s political policy not to run similar subjects on their front covers consecutively. Even though it was not selected for the front cover image, it was printed on an inside page.

• Clients: Henry Kapteyn & Margaret Murnane Groups


• Related Links: JILA's Research ighlight article Air Force Print News Today Wright-Patterson Air Force Base

Optical 2-D Fourier transform spectroscopy of semiconductors

This was my first 3D project at JILA. I worked closely with Tianhao Zhang who wanted a cover image to be used for PNAS magazine. He came to me with some 3D renderings from Matlab which were too basic and limiting. So we worked together in figuring out how to import 3D information based on data samples from Matlab into Autodesk Maya. Basically there isn’t any function in Matlab for this need and I couldn’t find anybody in the Matlab or Maya communities that had any solutions. So Tianhao and I develop a Matlab script that created/formatted .obj files based off the data points. It worked and I was able to make some very good high resolution renderings using Maya.

• Client: Steve Cundiff Group

EUV illustration and animation

I worked closely with Etienne Gagnon and Arvinder Sandhu who wanted an illustration and animation for their powerpoint presentation about using High-order Harmonics with Momentum Imaging Techniques to study atomic and molecular dynamics. They were basically presented their presentation internationally and need some really strong and clear visuals to supplement their talks.

This was one of my first laser schematics that I ever illustrated and also to animate as well. I used flash to make the animation, so that I could script in some controls for the presenters to utilize while they giving their talk (controls that let them start and stop and replay certain sections of the sequence again)

• Clients: Henry Kapteyn & Margaret Murnane Groups, Etienne Gagnon, Arvinder Sandhu

Attosecond Science & Coherent X-rays

I worked closely with Margaret Murnane and Dr. Oren Cohen on making this technical figure and animation. My goal was trying to keep technical side intact and make the concept accessible to a general audience as well.

• Client: Henry Kapteyn & Margaret Murnane Groups


• Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article, Watch Animation

JILA Machine Shop Course

My writer/boss wanted to make a JILA Light & Matter story about the machine shop course that is available to all employees at JILA, so I was the one who volunteer to take the course and also take photos for the story.

• Client: JILA's Instrument Shop

Reflection Grisms

Photo shoot of Ralph's laser reflection grisms.

• Client: Ralph Jimenez Group


• Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Rolling Wheels & Friction

Ralph came to me asking to re-design a image he had for a text book that was going to be published in the following months. He told me he wanted a more visually clear image of the concept of how the rolling balls reach the bottom of the slop due to varied friction and uniform friction.

• Client: Ralph Jimenez

Casimir-Polder Force

This illustration and animation was designed to show how the casimir-polder force works on a quantum atomic level to a general audience.

• Client: Eric Cornell Group


• Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article, Watch Animation

Yotta Computer

The computing group at JILA asked me to take some photos of their new computer cluster they just designed called the Yotta computer. AMD donated 8 cutting-edge-dual-core processors which were used to build the ever growing Yotta computer cluster.

• Client: Computing Team at JILA

Sympathetic Cooling & Simply Pathetic Cooling

• Client: John Bohn


• Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article, Watch Animation

Breathing Cloud of ultracold fermions

This was one of my first animations/illustrations that I made at JILA. The animation is essentially a simulation that is driven by math equations and randomness algorithms using flash's actionscripting. Making this simulation was very similar to the animations and simulations that I had to make for my engineering course (Computer Simulations) using program called Processing (JAVA-based).

• Clients: Seth Rittenhouse, Javier Von Stecher


• Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article, Watch Animation

Cowboy/Wild Strut

This is a personal project that Chris and I wrote and designed. It is a western, fantasy story about a young cowboy who struggles with apathy while the Wild West is ready to devour him. He fights for control against forces that seem to lead his destiny. The cowboy is plagued with an unwanted subconscious companion who guides and protects him. He is unsure about his path, and he has no choice but to see what beckons him.

This story is the first episode to the major epic. Chris and I were heavily inspired by Clint Eastwood Western movies.

Chris and I worked together on all project aspects. Chris illustrated all the images for this project. For more detail information about this project please go here

Crowd Simulation Plug-in for Maya

The goal was to create a Maya plug-in that simulates crowds of intelligent agents in a 3D environment. Agents have individual and flocking behaviors that can be customized to give the user complete control over agents' action. This will be a versatile tool for smaller, low budget productions that allows the generation of high quality crowd simulations for 3D animations. Our tool will allow digital artists to design complex animations without extensive programming ability. I was responible for Flocking/Steering Behaviors of the 3D agents. My teammates were: Jay Fittipaldi, Chris Dang, and Josiah Greenewald.

For more detail information and video demos please visit my site here.