 In 1957 McCormick accepted a post as staff physicist at the Alvarez Hydrogen Bubble Chamber Group at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.The Chamber Group was led by Dr. Luis Alvarez, who later won the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physics.In 1960 Dr. McCormick began 12 years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he was a professor of physics, computer science, and bioengineering.