After graduating from U.C.L.A., he became a Research Associate at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he continued his work in theoretical plasma physics and nonlinear phenomena. He became increasingly interested in the issue of soliton robustness---the remarkable stability of solitons in experimental contexts. This interest led him to explore soliton robustness in optical fibers. In collaboration with Dr. Wai, who was a graduate student at the time, he studied solitons in the presence of third order dispersion, and on his own he studied solitons in birefringent optical fibers. In both cases, simulations predicted that solitons are remarkably stable and, in both cases, the predictions were soon experimentally verified.