Ezekiel Johnston-Halperin received a B.S. in Physics with honors from Case Western Reserve University and will receive his doctorate in March 2003 from the University of California, Santa Barbara under the supervision of Professor David Awschalom in experimental condensed matter physics. During the course of his research, he has worked with a variety of experimental techniques including torque magnetometry, ultra-fast pump-probe magneto-optical spectroscopy, and high magnetic field (up to 60 T) photoluminescence spectroscopy. In addition, he has used molecular beam epitaxy to fabricate magnetic semiconductor heterostructures, and also developed advanced atomic layer epitaxy schemes for this class of materials. Many of these characterization and growth techniques have been employed in the investigation of electron spin dynamics in both nonmagnetic and ferromagnetic semiconductor systems.