sean r. garner is a physicist currently working on a diverse suite of projects for palo alto research center (parc), in san francisco, ca. garner received his ba, mathematics and bs, physics from university of california, santa cruz in 1999, and completed his phd in physics in 2005 at cornell university. his thesis was titled "force-gradient detection of nuclear magnetic resonance", and prof. john a. marohn was his doctoral advisor. he then spent 3 years as a postdoctoral fellow at harvard university, school of engineering and applied sciences researching ultra-slow and stopped light in bose-einstein condensates with prof. lene vestergaard hau. garner was the second author on the groundbreaking paper “coherent control of optical information with matter wave dynamics,” which appeared on the cover of nature, and detailed the first experimental verification "that a slow light pulse can be stopped and stored in one bose–einstein condensate and subsequently revived from a totally different condensate, 160 m away; information is transferred through conversion of the optical pulse into a travelling matter wave."