Dr. John Collins is professor of physics at Wheaton College, an undergraduate college in Norton, MA. John is a committed teacher and teaches a range of courses from introductory level courses for non-science majors (e.g. The Physics of Music and Sound) to upper level courses for physics majors. John maintains an active research program at Wheaton, where he has had several students do honors theses on topics such a luminescence spectroscopy, the construction and characterization of lasers, and the observation and modeling of variable stars. His primary research interests are in the field of the luminescence spectroscopy of solid state insulating materials doped with rare earth ions. Of particular interest at this time is the position and identification of the upper energy levels of the rare earth ions in solids, non-radiative processes (e.g. vibronic transitions, energy transfer and multi-phonon decay), and in site selective spectroscopy of rare earth ions in crystals.

John received his bachelors degree in physics from Holy Cross College in 1977 and his Ph.D. in physics from Boston College in 1987. His introduction to the study of luminescence began at Boston College under the guidance of Prof. B. Di Bartolo, where he investigated different possible schemes for developing phosphors having quantum efficiencies greater than unity. He has been a consultant for the phosphor industry and on NASA grants, has been a visiting professor at Boston College. He has one patent to his name.

John is married and lives in Newton, MA with his wife, Aliki, and three children (Claire, Theo, and Voula). In addition to his family and to the pursuit of knowledge, he also enjoys sports (especially basketball, bicycling and golf), reading (occasionally), and a good beer, though his definition of "good" is rather broad. He travels frequently to Greece and continues to work on learning the Greek language.