David Harris, Ph.D.

Dr. David "Doc" Harris is a native of Melbourne, Florida. 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, where he earned his master's degree and Ph.D. in physics and astronomy, 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.

In 2015, Dr. 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. He was honored as a Robert T. Alexander Visiting Fellow in October 2015.

At the completion of the visiting instructorship, Dr. Harris returned to Florida to become a physics Instructor at Florida Gulf Coast University.

In January of 2019, he 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.