He is a theorist with research interests in inverse problems, imaging, coherence theory and other branches of optical physics and works closely with a number of great experimenters. Prof. Carney is widely respected for having written the seminal papers in the field of near-field inverse scattering. His current interests include problems in inverse-scattering, the statistical optics of fast pulses, and spectroscopy. Prof Carney holds a BS in Engineering Physics from UIUC (1994), and a PhD in Physics from the University of Rochester (1999, advisor: Emil Wolf).