Personal Overview

Dr. David "Doc" Harris is a native to Melbourne, FL.  He graduated from Melbourne High School in 2002.  In 2008, he graduated as a Valedictorian of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences from the University of Florida with a BS in Physics.  At the University of Utah, he programmed the data reduction pipeline for the Frisco Peak Observatory.  His dissertation research investigated the Baldwin Effect using a sample of 200,000 quasar spectra.  He earned a PhD in 2015 (awarded  in 2016).

In 2015, Doc Harris started work as a Visiting Instructor of Physics at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.  He led a small group of cadets and officers in creating a computer simulation of black hole orbital dynamics in the Milky Way Galaxy.  There, he was honored as a Robert T. Alexander Visiting Fellow in OCT 2015. 

At the completion of the Visiting Instructorship, Doc Harris returned to Florida to become a Physics Instructor at Florida Gulf Coast University. 

In January of 2019, Doc Harris became an Assistant Teaching Professor of Physics at Florida Tech.  He is the Faculty Advisor for the Student Rocket Society and the Florida Tech Rocketry Club.