Donor Spotlight: Dr. Tony Simon - A Long-time Friend and Benefactor of the Physics Department
Alumni stories are an essential part of our department’s history. They reflect the collective pride for our former students and represent our gratitude for their generous support, both financial and inspirational. Today, we shine the spotlight on our long-term benefactor, Dr. Tony Simon.
Here is Tony’s remarkable story.
" I did my undergraduate physics degree at USL (now UL Lafayette). Dr. Davy Bernard was my research mentor. In addition to my classes, I worked at the Acadiana Research Lab (ARL), now the Louisiana Accelerator Center (LAC), using the 3 MeV van de Graaff accelerator. My senior research project made use of the accelerator for Proton Induced X-Ray Emission (PIXE) analysis of archaeological samples from Louisiana Native American settlements to investigate if there was a way to determine where artifacts came from and how they were traded between Native American villages. While the results weren't conclusive, my work at LAC gave me a strong experimental physics background. I feel that more effort could be done in that area by current generation of LAC students.
I worked for Dr. Meriwether and Dr. Dean Keeley on determining levels of baseline background radiation in mud samples from areas which were proposed for building nuclear power facility in Louisiana to provide information for comparison to future readings from these same locations once the power facility would come online. I do not know if there was any follow-up to those measurements or even if the power plant came online; however, I always enjoyed my time working for Dr. Meriwether and Dr. Keeley. While attending USL, I had classes with a number of physics professors including Dr. Bernard, Dr. Meriwether, Dr. Matese, Dr. Whitmire, Dr. Lafleur, and Dr. Spross. I enjoyed my classes with every one of them.
In 1984, I went to Texas A&M University and did my Ph.D. work under mentorship of Dr. John Hiebert. I spent three years in Los Alamos during my stint as a graduate student working on my dissertation experiment along with a couple of other experiments. My experiment was headed by Dr. Mike McNaughton and was making high precision measurements of the proton-proton absolute collision cross section.
I met my wife at Texas A&M and after receiving our Ph.Ds we moved to Indiana, where I worked as a Postdoc at the Indiana University Medical Center. There I built a prototype Positron Emission Tomographic Scanner for what would become IndyPET. This was a small animal PET scanner to assist in medical research. My wife and I ended up in Colorado and I worked for several companies more in a system engineering role than physics. Nevertheless, my physics background gave me a broad level of experience that has allowed me to adapt to many different projects in my professional career over the years.
Many years after graduation, I still look fondly on my days as an undergraduate in Physics at UL Lafayette and have always valued the education that gave me the basis for my career. I hope this helps you to understand a little about me and why I am always trying to help the Physics Department.”