Mike+Taormina

= ::: Mike Taormina ::: =

My name is Mike Taormina and I am a graduate student in Physics at the University of Oregon. I was born and grew up in Ontario, Oregon, which is located south of Hell's Canyon on the border with Idaho. Since then I have lived in Montana and Colorado and love to be in the great outdoors.

Here at the UO I am a member of Raghuveer Parthasarathy's lab where we study the physics of biological systems such as cells, DNA, bacteria, and even whole fish. I am building a microscope that lets us take movies in 3D of developing fish embryos for an entire day. The microscope uses both lasers //and// mutant fish that glow green! We want to learn about how an organism goes from one single cell to tens of thousands of organized and specially developed cells and tissues.

When I'm not shooting laser beams at fish (in the name of science, of course), I enjoy many outdoor activities, including fly fishing, rock climbing, mountaineering, camping, skiing, and snowboarding. I even spent an entire winter snowboarding the mountain at the top of the page. If you look close, you can see the building at the summit where I worked.