Gabe has been a major player in the ongoing efforts both to reinvigorate upper division laboratories and to create an active community of advanced laboratory practitioners. He brings to the Board his intimate knowledge of that ‘work in progress’ along with a commitment to the goals that this Foundation was formed to pursue. Gabe obtained his A.B. from Washington University in 1983 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1990.

He is now the Ames Professor of Physics at Illinois Wesleyan University, a liberal arts college of roughly 2000 students graduating a dozen physics majors each year (where the department of five faculty members rotates in new courses every other year so as to offer a dozen distinct instructional lab courses within the major, over the course of any two years).

Gabe served as the first President of the Advanced Laboratory Physics Association (ALPhA), remains on its Board, and has, more generally, tried to serve as an advocate for instructional labs beyond the first year of the physics major. In 2014, he was named the inaugural recipient of the APS Jonathan Reichert & Barbara Wolff-Reichert Award for Excellence in Advanced Laboratory Instruction, and was made a fellow of AAPT, APS, and SPIE. His recent research has utilized holographically textured optical and acoustic fields to trap & manipulate matter.