Upon returning to Canada, he fell into the hard
sciences and spent some time in Germany working at a particle accelerator.
Sticking with the sciences, Ian moved to Chicago where he was a nuclear
physicist probing the fundamental buildings blocks of the universe.
(Ian's thesis
is available in PDF format).
This got boring. Boring enough for Ian to abandon the sciences, move to Brooklyn and become a filmmaker at NYU's Graduate Film School. His first film is 'Twelve Stripes'.