Physics
Showing 1-100 of 405 Results
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Tom Abel
Professor of Particle Physics and Astrophysics and of Physics
BioWhat were the first objects that formed in the Universe, what is it made of, how does it work? Prof. Abel's group explores all of cosmic history using ab initio supercomputer calculations. He has shown from first principles that the very first luminous objects are very massive stars and has developed novel numerical algorithms using adaptive-mesh-refinement simulations that capture over 14 orders of magnitude in length and time scales. He has shown how the first stars galaxies form and affect everything that follows later. He has been pioneering novel numerical algorithms to study collisionless fluids such as dark matter as well as astrophysical and terrestrial plasmas. He has designed bespoke summary statistics to have interpretable, robust, efficient, summary statistics to describe spatial clustering based on fast nearest neighbor searches. His recent work is on creating digital twins of astronomical objects and the Universe as a whole in the context of the Center for Decoding the Universe. This Center leverages advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence to make sense of our Universe. He was the director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology and Division Director at SLAC 2013-2018.
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Soud Al Kharusi
Postdoctoral Scholar, Physics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsExperimental/astrophysical probes of neutrinos, fundamental symmetries, and cosmological models.
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Steven Allen
Professor of Physics and of Particle Physics and Astrophysics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsObservational astrophysics and cosmology; galaxies, galaxy clusters, dark matter and dark energy; applications of statistical methods; X-ray astronomy; X-ray detector development; optical astronomy; mm-wave astronomy; radio astronomy; gravitational lensing.
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Shreya Anand
Postdoctoral Scholar, Physics
BioLSST-DA Catalyst and KIPAC Rubin Fellow
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Batoul Banihashemi
Postdoctoral Scholar, Physics
BioResearch interests: quantum gravity, holography
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Paul Bergeron
Lecturer
BioDr. Paul Bergeron is a lecturer in the physics department, focusing on teaching the 40 series and engaging in curriculum reform. His background is in dark matter phenomenology, working on supersymmetric extensions to the Standard Model, detection of dark matter at neutrino telescopes, and the programmatic tools used by the community to make predictions. While doing particle physics research, his time was split with teaching, first as an LA at UCSC during his undergrad and then during his PhD at the University of Utah as a TA, Head TA, adjunct lecturer at a community college, and instructor for a continuing education course in astronomy that he developed. His time at the University of Utah also included Physics Education Research (PER) into the efficacy of Content Rich group problems as part of a curriculum redesign effort in the department there. Following his PhD, he did a post doc with the interdisciplinary education research group 3 Dimensional Learning for Undergraduate Science at Michigan State University. While there, he worked with faculty in the STEM Teaching and Learning Fellowship as they worked to align their teaching with how scientists think and do science, while doing research into the corresponding gateway course transformation effort and into student engagement with the Scientific Practice of using and constructing (scientific) models. After his post doc, he worked for two years as a professor at Pasadena Community College teaching introductory physics and astronomy lectures and laboratories. Originally from San Jose, he is excited to finally be back in the Bay Area and to be a part of the Stanford community!
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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. -
Patricia Burchat
Gabilan Professor
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsObservational cosmology. Dark energy. Weak gravitational lensing.
Preparing for science with the Legacy Survey of Space & Time (LSST).
Member of the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration. -
Blas Cabrera
Stanley G. Wojcicki Professor, Emeritus
BioFor five years up to mid-2015 has been Spokesperson for the SuperCDMS (Cryogenic Dark Matter Search) collaboration with twenty-two member institutions, which mounted a series of experiments in the Soudan mine in northern Minnesota to search for the dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles or WIMPs. This direct detection effort has lead the world in sensitivity for much of the past ten years and utilizes novel cryogenic detectors using germanium and silicon crystals operated below 0.1 K. The completed CDMS II experiment operated 4 kg of germanium and 1 kg of silicon for two years and set the most sensitive limits at the time for spin-independent interactions for WIMPs masses above 40 GeV/c2. The SuperCDMS Soudan experiment operated 9 kg of germanium until the end of calendar 2015.
He was selected for a three-term as Project Director, through mid 2018, for the approved second generation (G2) SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment which will operate 30 kg of Ge and Si detectors in the deeper SNOLAB facility in Canada. The project searches for low mass WIMPs (0.1 - 10 GeV/c2) and the cryostat facility will allow future upgrades to search down to the solar neutrino floor. It has recently been approved for full construction by the DOE and NSF. -
Rebecca C. Chen
Postdoctoral Scholar, Physics
BioBrinson Prize Fellow
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Ani Chiti
Postdoctoral Scholar, Physics
BioI am a Brinson Prize Fellow at Stanford University, primarily interested in the formation of the first stars and galaxies, the formation of heavy elements, the early Milky Way, and local dynamical tracers of dark matter. I observe and characterize nearby stars and galaxies that formed at early times to understand these topics, in an approach known as "Near-field cosmology" or "Galactic archaeology".
Before joining Stanford, I was the inaugural Brinson Prize Fellow in Observational Astrophysics at the University of Chicago. I obtained a PhD in Physics from MIT in 2021, and received bachelor's degrees in Physics and Mathematics from Cornell University in 2014. -
Steven Chu
William R. Kenan Jr. Professor, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology and of Energy Science and Engineering
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsSynthesis, functionalization and applications of nanoparticle bioprobes for molecular cellular in vivo imaging in biology and biomedicine. Linear and nonlinear difference frequency mixing ultrasound imaging. Lithium metal-sulfur batteries, new approaches to electrochemical splitting of water. CO2 reduction, lithium extraction from salt water
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Sarah Church
Professor of Physics, Emerita
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsExperimental & Observational Astrophysics and Cosmology
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Suchetha Cooray
Postdoctoral Scholar, Physics
BioSuchetha Cooray is a KIPAC Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University. His research operates at the intersection of observational data, galaxy formation physics, cosmological theory, and artificial intelligence.
Suchetha is broadly interested in decoding the "cosmic ecosystems" that drive galaxy growth and evolution. His work seeks to reveal the complete lifecycle of galaxies—tracing their origins from density peaks of dark matter, through the complex interaction of their baryonic components, to their eventual cessation of star formation. Galaxy formation presents a profound computational challenge, as physical processes span at least 14 orders of magnitude, from the sub-parsec scales of black hole accretion disks to the vast web of cosmic large-scale structure.
To navigate this complexity, Suchetha employs numerical simulations and machine learning to build statistically robust models of the Universe, connecting the first galaxies revealed by JWST to the mature populations of the present day. As the field enters a transformative decade for precision cosmology, his research focuses on maximizing the scientific insights from upcoming major surveys—including PFS, Euclid, Rubin LSST, SPHEREx, and Roman.
Previously, Suchetha was a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and earned his doctorate at Nagoya University. -
John Franklin Crenshaw
Postdoctoral Scholar, Physics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsObservational Cosmology, Large Scale Structure, Galaxy Evolution, Machine Learning in Science, Survey Astronomy, Active Optics
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Trithep Devakul
Assistant Professor of Physics
BioI specialize in theoretical condensed matter physics. My research focuses on emergent quantum phases of matter, particularly those arising from the interplay of topology with electronic interactions and correlations in two-dimensional materials.
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Savas Dimopoulos
Hamamoto Family Professor
BioWhat is the origin of mass? Are there other universes with different physical laws?
Professor Dimopoulos has been searching for answers to some of the deepest mysteries of nature. Why is gravity so weak? Do elementary particles have substructure? What is the origin of mass? Are there new dimensions? Can we produce black holes in the lab?
Elementary particle physics is entering a spectacular new era in which experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN will soon shed light on such questions and lead to a new deeper theory of particle physics, replacing the Standard Model proposed forty years ago. The two leading candidates for new theories are the Supersymmetric Standard Model and theories with Large Extra Dimensions, both proposed by Professor Dimopoulos and collaborators.
Professor Dimopoulos is collaborating on a number of experiments that use the dramatic advances in atom interferometry to do fundamental physics. These include testing Einstein’s theory of general relativity to fifteen decimal precision, atom neutrality to thirty decimals, and looking for modifications of quantum mechanics. He is also designing an atom-interferometric gravity-wave detector that will allow us to look at the universe with gravity waves instead of light, marking the dawn of gravity wave astronomy and cosmology. -
Chunyang Ding
Ph.D. Student in Physics, admitted Summer 2023
BioChunyang Ding is a physicist working on novel implementations of quantum computing, currently living in Redwood City, CA. He graduated from Yale University with a B.S. in Physics (Intensive), and had worked in the labs of Professors Michel Devoret (superconducting qubits, microwave resonators), Nir Navon (ultracold atoms, MOT for Potassium), and Marla Geha (satelite galaxies, statistical analysis). He was previously an associate physicist at IonQ, a trapped ion quantum computing startup associated with Chris Monroe and Jungsang Kim, and is now a PhD student at Stanford/University of Chicago, working on novel fluxonium gate schemes in the lab of Professor David Schuster.
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Persis S. Drell
Provost, Emerita, James and Anna Marie Spilker Professor, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and of Physics
BioPersis Drell is the James and Anna Marie Spilker Professor in the School of Engineering, a professor of materials science and engineering, and a professor of physics. From Feb 1, 2017 to Sept. 30, 2023, Drell was the provost of Stanford University.
Prior to her appointment as provost in February 2017, she was dean of the Stanford School of Engineering from 2014 to 2017 and director of U.S. Department of Energy SLAC National Acceleratory Laboratory from 2007 to 2012.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics from Wellesley College and her PhD in atomic physics from UC Berkeley. Before joining the faculty at Stanford in 2002, she was a faculty member in the physics department at Cornell University for 14 years. -
Ben Feldman
Associate Professor of Physics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsHow do material properties change as a result of interactions among electrons, and what is the nature of the new phases that result? What novel physical phenomena and functionality (e.g., symmetry breaking or topological excitations) can be realized by combining materials and device elements to produce emergent behavior? How can we leverage nontraditional measurement techniques to gain new insight into quantum materials? These are some of the overarching questions we seek to address in our research.
We are interested in a variety of quantum systems, especially those composed of two-dimensional flakes and heterostructures. This class of materials has been shown to exhibit an incredible variability in their properties, with the further benefit that they are highly tunable through gating and applied fields. -
Philipp Frank
Postdoctoral Scholar, Physics
BioPhilipp Frank is an Astronomy and Machine Learning researcher who is developing and applying statistical and ai methods to help deepen our understanding of the structure of the Milky Way and the Cosmos. He did his PhD and a followup Postdoc in Germany at Ludwig Maximilians University and the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics where he worked on probabilistic ML and numerical inference methods and contributed to applications ranging from radio interferometry, X- and gamma-ray imaging, Cosmic Ray air-shower reconstructions, and 3d maps of the dust and gas content of our local Galactic neighborhood.
As a KIPAC Fellow at Stanford he aims to push 3D mapping of the interstellar medium to unprecedented scales in both size and resolution, and incorporate multiple additional tracers for a more comprehensive picture of local structures. This aims to shed light on the mechanisms of star formation and galaxy dynamics across scales only accessible through our unique vantage point within the Galaxy. -
Joshua Frieman
Professor of Particle Physics and Astrophysics and, by courtesy, of Physics
BioI carry out theoretical and observational research in cosmology on topics including dark energy, dark matter, and inflation, using tools such as large-scale structure, gravitational lensing, and supernovae, with increasing focus on the application of machine learning to the analysis of cosmic surveys. Cosmology is akin to archaeology on the grand scale: as an archaeologist uses pottery shards to reconstruct an ancient civilization and how it evolved, cosmologists use both small- and large-scale data to reconstruct the origin and evolution of the universe and to probe fundamental physics.
