Name: J.D. Norris
Hometown: Midland, Texas
Major: Ph.D. candidate, Electrical Engineering
Class of 2006

J.D. Norris was originally drawn to engineering because of the opportunity it offered to combine his two interests - science and music.

"My original goal was to design and build guitar amplifiers," says J.D., who has been playing guitar since he was eight years old.

J.D. began his graduate studies at SMU via distance learning while working as a radio frequency engineer with Motorola in Fort Worth. He completed his master's degree in May 2003 and is now on campus full-time working on his Ph.D. in electrical engineering.

"I'd like to be able to do something more creative," J.D. says. "My graduate work has shown that I can pursue a wide spectrum of opportunities."

The focus of his Ph.D. thesis will be adaptive signal processing, which has many applications, including audio, biomedical, geophysics and defense systems.

In addition to his studies, J.D. has been a valuable asset to the Infinity Project, which brings engineering to high school classrooms. He helps train high school teachers to teach the Infinity curriculum, helps support teachers during the school year, and attends conferences to raise the visibility of the program.