Biography:
I was born in Blue Earth, Minnesota to Bill and Laurie Christensen, the
manager and accountant of a family run hardware store. I’ve been interested in
math and science since elementary school. I attended college at Iowa State
University in Ames, Iowa where I majored in physics looking for a challenge and
found my classes to be fascinating and rewarding. Starting the end of my
freshman year, I participated in undergraduate research under Kai-Ming Ho,
studying photonic crystal phenomena by building 3-D photonic crystals at
centimeter scales for manipulating microwaves. I also met my wife Abby at Iowa
State, who lives with me now in Somerville, MA. I started my Ph.D at MIT in
2005, where I’ve worked for Wolfgang Ketterle in the Science Chamber, and I’ve
loved the school and the work ever since.
- G. Jo, Y. Lee, J. Choi, C. Christensen, T. Kim, D. Pritchard, W. Ketterle, and J.H. Thywissen. Observation of itinerant ferromagnetism in a strongly interacting Fermi gas of ultracold atoms. Science, 325:1521, 2009.
- C. Christensen, S. Will, G. Jo, Y. Shin, W. Ketterle, D. Pritchard, and M. Saba. Trapping of Ultracold Atoms in a Hollow-core Photonic Crystal Fiber. Phys. Rev. A, 78:033429, 2008.
- G. Jo, J. Choi, C. Christensen, Y. Lee, T. Pasquini, W. Ketterle, and D. Pritchard. Matter-Wave Interferometry with Phase Fluctuating Bose-Einstein Condensates. Phys. Rev. Lett., 99:240406, 2007.
- G. Jo, J. Choi, C. Christensen, T. Pasquini, Y. Lee, W. Ketterle, and D. Pritchard. Phase-Sensitive Recombination of Two Bose-Einstein condensates on an Atom Chip. Phys. Rev. Lett., 98:180401, 2007.