Wayne Trail

Wayne received his PhD in theoretical atomic and molecular physics from the University of Oklahoma in 1991.  He held post-doctoral research positions at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics in Colorado and later at the University of Oklahoma.  Starting in 1996 he worked in the private sector in the field of plasma chemistry developing software to simulate plasma chemical processes used in microchip production.  He then became an independent consultant where, for example, he won a National Science Foundation Small Business Innovative Research grant to develop software to interface ongoing scientific projects to the Web, and later worked as a software developer on the National Institute of Standards and Technology Advanced Radiometer (NISTAR) that was to fly on NASA’s Triana (later DSCVR) mission.

Wayne currently is an associate professor in the department of chemistry and physics at Southwestern Oklahoma State University (SWOSU) in Weatherford, Oklahoma, where he has been teaching since 2003.  He has taught classes in physics, computer science, and mathematics.  While at SWOSU he directed and taught ExxonMobil Bernard Harris Sumer Science Camps from 2005-2012.  These are two-week residential (on-campus) hands-on science camps for underrepresented students.  In eight years he impacted over 400 middle school students, many of whom later became first generation college students.  Wayne has been the SWOSU Physics Club Sponsor for six years and has supervised many undergraduates in small research projects in physics and astronomy that have been presented at meetings and research fairs.