Joseph Shaw with guitar

I am a native of Bozeman, Montana, but I also have lived in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Switzerland, and Japan.  My family has been in Montana since 1864. 

Most of my young years were spent in Fairbanks, Alaska, where my father was a physics professor at the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). 

My career has taken me on a trip through the Rocky Mountains:

Map showing that Joseph Shaw has lived in Alaska, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and Montana
  From 1989 to 2001, I worked at the Earth System Research Laboratories (formerly 
  Wave Propagation Laboratory and Environmental Technology Laboratory) at the
  National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado.
  A NOAA fellowship gave me the chance to study at the renowned Optical Sciences
  Center in Tucson, Arizona, where I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on laser remote
  sensing advised by John Reagan (IEEE Fellow) and Jim Churnside (OSA Fellow). In
  2001 I joined the faculty at Montana State University ... back home in Bozeman. 

  I love playing music (primarily guitar and bass, saxophone not so much any more)
  and photographing natural optical phenomena around the world. In 2017 I
  published a photo-rich book, Optics in the Air: Observing optical phenomena
  through airplane windows. It's available through SPIE and Amazon.