Stanford PULSE Institute


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  • Philip Bucksbaum

    Philip Bucksbaum

    Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor of Natural Science and Professor of Photon Science, of Applied Physics and of Physics

    BioPhil Bucksbaum holds the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Chair in Natural Science at Stanford University, with appointments in Physics, Applied Physics, and in Photon Science at SLAC. He conducts his research in the Stanford PULSE Institute (https://web.stanford.edu/~phbuck). He and his wife Roberta Morris live in Menlo Park, California. Their grown daughter lives in Toronto.

    Bucksbaum was born and raised in Iowa, and graduated from Harvard in 1975. He attended U.C. Berkeley on a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship and received his Ph.D. in 1980 for atomic parity violation experiments under Professor Eugene Commins, with whom he also has co-authored a textbook, “Weak Interactions of Leptons and Quarks.” In 1981 he joined Bell Laboratories, where he pursued new applications of ultrafast coherent radiation from terahertz to vacuum ultraviolet, including time-resolved VUV ARPES, and strong-field laser-atom physics.

    He joined the University of Michigan in 1990 and stayed for sixteen years, becoming Otto Laporte Collegiate Professor and then Peter Franken University Professor. He was founding Director of FOCUS, a National Science Foundation Physics Frontier Center, where he pioneered research using ultrafast lasers to control quantum systems. He also launched the first experiments in ultrafast x-ray science at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Lab. In 2006 Bucksbaum moved to Stanford and SLAC, and organized the PULSE Institute to develop research utilizing the world’s first hard x-ray free-electron laser, LCLS. In addition to directing PULSE, he has previously served as Department Chair of Photon Science and Division Director for Chemical Science at SLAC. His current research is in laser interrogation of atoms and molecules to explore and image structure and dynamics on the femtosecond scale. He currently has more than 250 publications.

    Bucksbaum is a Fellow of the APS and the Optical Society, and has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has held Guggenheim and Miller Fellowships, and received the Norman F. Ramsey Prize of the American Physical Society for his work in ultrafast and strong-field atomic and molecular physics. He served as the Optical Society President in 2014, and also served as the President of the American Physical Society in 2020. He has led or participated in many professional service activities, including NAS studies, national and international boards, initiatives, lectureships and editorships.

  • Ryan Coffee

    Ryan Coffee

    Senior Scientist, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

    BioRyan earned his Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Bachelor of Science in Physics from the University of Arkansas followed by a PhD in Atomic, Molecular and Optical (AMO) Physics from the University of Connecticut. He joined the PULSE Institute at Stanford/SLAC in 2006 and led the first laser pumped, x-ray probed experiment at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) in 2009. Since then, he has become Senior Research Scientist in PULSE and LCLS with an emphasis on AMO science and novel instrumentation and the requisite computational methods for streaming data processing at the sensor edge, in particular targeting the million frames per second LCLS-II.

    In that context he has been a core member of the SLAC AI Initiative since its inception with particular emphasis on Machine Learning for real-time information extraction. With projects ranging from x-ray spectroscopy in molecules, ultrafast materials response, radiographic medical imaging, and tokamak plasma fusion, he has become an adamant proponent of data and model marketplaces for cross-domain innovation sharing with built in provenance and value tracking for an intelligent adaptive data and model retention.

    Beyond SLAC, Ryan is driving an integrative approach to instrumentation and co-design of computing infrastructure across the portfolio of Department of Energy labs and facilities as well as technologies across the computing industry. From diagnostic and detector development to algorithms and AI accelerators, from the sensor Edge to Leadership Computing Facilities, he is leveraging his hobbies and his passions to drive the bleeding edge of basic science to address the emerging challenges of automation in industry and agriculture for a better future for his daughters.

  • Amy Cordones-Hahn

    Amy Cordones-Hahn

    Lead Scientist, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

    BioI am a staff scientist in the Stanford PULSE Institute at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, where I work in the Solution Phase Chemistry Group. I am interested in understanding the excited state processes that drive photochemical reactions of transition metal complexes relevant for solar energy conversion and catalysis. My research takes advantage of the atomic specificity of ultrafast x-ray methods at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), coupled with complementary ultrafast optical spectroscopy methods, to resolve the dynamics and reaction mechanisms of transition metal complexes acting as photosensitizers and photocatalysts.

    Research website: https://ultrafast.stanford.edu/spc-solution-phase-chemistry

  • James P. Cryan

    James P. Cryan

    Senior Scientist, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

    BioI am interested in photo-induced dynamics of atoms and molecules. I am particularly interested in the dynamics of excited states in these systems, and how energy transfer takes place inside a molecule. The relevant timescales for these interactions is typically in the range of attoseconds to picoseconds. These dynamics include photo-triggered chemistry such as non Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics and quantum phenomena in strong-field driven systems. I also develop tools for studying these dynamics in the time domain.

    My research builds on my extensive experience with ultrafast optical laser science and technology. As a graduate student at Stanford University I participated in the first experiments at the Linac Coherent Light Source, where we studied a new regime of X-ray-matter interactions. I was a postdoctoral scholar at Lawerence Berkeley National Laboratory before returning to SLAC to lead the attosecond science group.

  • Peter Dahlberg

    Peter Dahlberg

    Assistant Professor of Photon Science and of Structural Biology

    BioPeter Dahlberg received his undergraduate degree at McGill University in 2011 and his Ph.D. in biophysics from the University of Chicago in 2016. He then came to Stanford to work with W. E. Moerner and Wah Chiu to develop correlative light and electron microscopy methods. These methods give highly specific information on the machines that fill cells and make them work. In 2021 he was awarded SLAC’s Panofsky Fellowship to continue his work on correlative microscopy. In 2023 he transitioned to a Staff Scientist role at SLAC. See the group website below for more information.

  • Leora Dresselhaus-Marais

    Leora Dresselhaus-Marais

    Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, of Photon Science and, by courtesy, of Mechanical Engineering

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy group develops new methods to update old processes in metals manufacturing

  • Matthew R. Edwards

    Matthew R. Edwards

    Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering

    BioMatthew Edwards is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His research applies high-power lasers to the development of optical diagnostics for fluids and plasmas, the study of intense light-matter interactions, and the construction of compact light and particle sources, combining adaptive high-repetition-rate experiments and large-scale simulations to explore new regimes in fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, materials science, and plasma physics.

    Matthew received BSE, MA, and PhD degrees in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University. He was then a Lawrence Fellow in the National Ignition Facility and Photon Science Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

  • Alan R. Fry

    Alan R. Fry

    Senior Scientist, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

    BioAlan Fry is the Director of the Matter in Extreme Conditions Petawatt Upgrade (MEC-U), a major new FES facility at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory that brings the most powerful optical lasers together with the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray laser to enable transformational research in high-energy density plasma science. Earlier at SLAC he was the Division Director for Laser Science and Technology at LCLS, where he led the development of ultrafast optical laser systems for the LCLS user program and accelerator facility operations. Before joining SLAC, Alan worked in private industry leading the development of ultrafast lasers for scientific research.

  • Kelly Gaffney

    Kelly Gaffney

    Professor of Photon Science and, by courtesy, of Chemistry

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe research team Professor Gaffney leads focuses on time resolved studies of chemical reactions. Recent advances in ultrafast x-ray lasers, like the LCLS at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, enable chemical reactions to be observed on the natural time and length scales of the chemical bond – femtoseconds and Ångströms. The knowledge gained from x-ray and optical laser studies will be used to spark new approaches to photo-catalysis and chemical synthesis.

  • Shambhu Ghimire

    Shambhu Ghimire

    Lead Scientist, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

    BioShambhu Ghimire is a Principal Investigator and a Group Leader at Stanford PULSE Institute. He teaches Ultrafast Quantum Dynamics in Applied physics and Physics Department at Stanford. Ghimire's research interests are in ultrafast AMO and Condensed Matter Physics, which includes the use of world's first X-ray free-electron laser, Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), as well as the table-top lasers and high-harmonics systems that his team has pioneered at SLAC. They observed high-harmonics from bulk crystals subjected to intense mid-infrared laser pulses for the first time in 2010. Since then, they have been investigating the underlying generation mechanism for their potential spectroscopic applications. The latest discoveries include the use of high-harmonics in ultrafast spectroscopy of two-dimensional crystals and topological insulators, which includes the capability to probe crystal symmetries and topological phase transitions in all-optical settings. Ghimire has been recognized as an Optica Fellow in 2024 for his pioneering contributions to strong-field and attosecond physics in condensed matter systems. Ghimire had received prestigious young investigator award from U. S. Department of Energy in 2014. Before joining Stanford, Ghimire did a post-doc work at University of Michigan, following a Ph.D degree in atomic, molecular and optical physics from Kansas State University in 2007.