About kevin gima

Beginnings

Hello, my name is Kevin Gima. I was born in the state of Maryland adjacent to the nation’s capital. During elementary school, I stumbled across a book discussing black holes and other exotic astronomy objects in my local library (Prince George's County Memorial Library-Hyattsville Branch). I've been hooked on the physical sciences ever since.  Also, another important point to mention is that I was in special education (an education track for students with differing disabilities) for most of my elementary school years. So, I can relate to the feelings of unworthiness, guilt, and inadequacy that plague many neurodivergent children. After elementary school I moved to Illinois to live with my extended family in 2001.  I graduated from Larkin High School in Elgin, Illinois in 2007.

road to bachelors and masters

I attained my associate degree in drafting from Elgin Community College in Elgin, Illinois. After that I attended Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Maryland and attained another associates degree in Mathematics in December 2014. I then transferred to University of Maryland, College Park and earned my Bachelor of Science in Physics in May 2018. A couple months later, I moved and matriculated to North Dakota State University (NDSU) for my master’s degree in physics that I earned in May 2020 during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. For my master’s thesis, I researched electron transfer induced by the thermoelectric effect in lead telluride nanowires under my advisor Dr. Dmitri Kilin. Furthermore, I was also a teaching assistant for physics labs in the university. I supervised three introductory labs per semester.

credentials

After briefly working at a high school, I now tutor for a nonprofit called RISE (more info https://risedc.org/).  Along with my teaching assistantship position at NDSU, my extensive teaching and tutoring experience has augmented, honed, and developed my communication skills to a very effective level. I can take normally complex topics and concepts and explain it to the average layperson in an engaging and accessible manner. Furthermore, a plethora of hands-on kinesthetic lab experience enables me to have an accurate intuition, if you may, about many physical concepts. Additionally, taking quantum mechanics at the undergraduate and graduate level has given me a good grasp on its many abstract and difficult to understand concepts. All these qualifications and experience puts me in a unique position to help people enhance their understanding of quantum physics and quantum mechanics .