Jeff Gore

Gore studied at MIT in the late 1990s as an undergraduate, and received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005 with a Hertz Graduate Fellowship. His dissertation research was done in the laboratory of Carlos Bustamante, and focused on single-molecule biophysics. ==Academic career and research==

Gore worked as a Pappalardo Fellow at MIT's physics department for three years, until January 2010, when he became an assistant professor there. ==Activism==

Gore's anti-penny activism first came to public attention when he posted a calculation of the cost of the penny to Americans in terms of wasted time ($5 billion) while a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the founder of the organization "Citizens to Retire the Penny", through which he advocates for the elimination of the penny. Gore was interviewed on the Colbert Report in 2008 on the subject of pennies; he also endorsed Barack Obama's presidential campaign (this interview took place before the 2008 election). ==References==