Dr. Thompson arrived at UCLA in 1997 to pursue graduate studies in physics after earning his bachelors degree at Stanford University. He joined PBPL one year later and worked on various aspects of photoinjector dynamics, longitudinal electron beam phase space manipulation, and magnet design before turning his attention to beam/plasma interactions. Dr. Thompson received his Ph.D. from UCLA in June 2004. Afterwards he contined to work at PBPL as a postdoc and is currently spliting his time between a plasma electron beam lens experiment at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois and a dielectric wakefield accelerator experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.