School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 71-80 of 82 Results
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Leonard Susskind
Felix Bloch Professor of Physics
BioLeonard Susskind is the Felix Bloch professor of Theoretical physics at Stanford University. His research interests include string theory, quantum field theory, quantum statistical mechanics and quantum cosmology. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an associate member of the faculty of Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and a distinguished professor of the Korea Institute for Advanced Study.
Susskind is widely regarded as one of the fathers of string theory, having, with Yoichiro Nambu and Holger Bech Nielsen, independently introduced the idea that particles could in fact be states of excitation of a relativistic string. He was the first to introduce the idea of the string theory landscape in 2003. -
AMIT TIWARI
Lecturer, Physics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsAmit is interested in questions surrounding the primordial universe and the search for new physics beyond the Standard Model, and has published papers on topics including supersymmetry, grand unified theories, dark matter, topological defects, and gravitational waves. He also thinks deeply about how to improve physics education, developing better teaching methods, designing new undergraduate-level physics problems, and exploring how AI tools can help both students and instructors.
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Lauren Tompkins
Associate Professor of Physics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsProfessor Tompkins’s research focuses on understanding the relationships which govern matter’s most fundamental constituents. As a member of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), she utilizes the world’s highest energy person-made particle collisions in order to understand the mechanism that gives particles mass, whether or not our current model of elementary particle interactions is a complete description of nature, and if dark matter can be produced and studied in colliders.
In order to search for the exceedingly rare interactions which may provide insight to these questions, the LHC will produce a blistering rate of 50 to 80 proton-proton collisions every 25 nanoseconds in 2015 and beyond. Professor Tompkins works on the design and implementation of custom electronics which will improve the ATLAS experiment’s ability to pick out the collisions which produce the Higgs bosons, dark matter particles and other rare events out of the deluge of ordinary interactions. Her group focuses on particles called heavy flavor fermions, the most massive particles not responsible for mediating interactions. Because they are so heavy, they may have a special connection to the origin of mass or physics beyond our current models of particle interactions.
She is additionally a member of the Light Dark Matter Experiment (LDMX), a proposed experiment to produce and detect dark matter in the laboratory utilizing an accelerated beam of electrons, and the Heavy Photon Search Experiment, which searches for visible decays of dark photons.
Please see her group website for a full description of her research activities. -
John Turneaure
Professor (Research) of Physics, Emeritus
BioJohn received his PhD in physics from Stanford University. He later became a research associate in W.W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory. Following, he acted as an assistant professor of physics, senior research associate, and professor. Research interests include experimental and observational astrophysics and cosmology.
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Robert Wagoner
Professor of Physics, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsProbes (accretion disks, ...) of black holes, sources and detectors of gravitational radiation, theories of gravitation, anthropic cosmological principle.
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Risa Wechsler
Director, Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), Humanities and Sciences Professor, Professor of Physics and of Particle Physics and Astrophysics, and Senior Fellow at Stanford HAI
BioRisa Wechsler is the Humanities and Sciences Professor and the Director of the Kavli Institute of Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. She is also Professor of Physics (H&S) and Professor of Particle Physics & Astrophysics (SLAC), Director of the Center for Decoding the Universe, and an Associate Director and Senior Fellow of the Stanford Institute for Human Centered AI. She is a cosmologist whose work investigates some of the biggest outstanding questions about our universe — how it formed, what it is made of, how it is structured, and what its future holds.
Her research focuses on understanding the evolution of galaxies, the large-scale structure of the universe, and the nature of dark matter and dark energy. She uses large numerical simulations, theoretical models, and the largest observed maps of the universe to explore these forces that shape the cosmos. Her recent work also investigates the formation and cosmological context of the Milky Way and probes dark matter through small-scale cosmic structure, and explores how data science and AI/ML can drive new understanding. Wechsler has played key leadership roles in major international collaborations including the Dark Energy Survey, Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, and Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and time, a decade-long survey that will reveal the dynamic universe in unprecedented detail. She is recently involved in the Via Survey, which will map the Milky Way at high precision to probe dark matter physics in new ways.
Wechsler is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Carl Wieman
Cheriton Family Professor and Professor of Physics and of Education, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe Wieman group’s research generally focuses on the nature of expertise in science and engineering, particularly physics, and how that expertise is best learned, measured, and taught. This involves a range of approaches, including individual cognitive interviews, laboratory experiments, and classroom interventions with controls for comparisons. We are also looking at how different classroom practices impact the attitudes and learning of different demographic groups.
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Mason Yearian
Professor of Physics, Emeritus
BioMason received his PhD in physics at Stanford University. Later, he served as an assistant professor, associate professor, and professor at Stanford. Past research includes developing detectors for X-ray and gamma ray astronomy, and work on the GRO/EGRET experiments. Mason also developed a computer-based curriculum for teaching introductory physics courses in high schools and universities.
