Academic Appointments

Administrative Appointments

  • Executive Committee Member, APS Division of Particle and Fields (2020 - Present)
  • Fast Tracker Project Leader, ATLAS Experiment (2017 - 2019)
  • Management Advisory Committee Member, US ATLAS (2016 - 2019)
  • Diversity and Inclusion Contact, ATLAS Experiment (2017 - 2018)

Honors & Awards

  • CAREER Award, National Science Foundation (2016-2021)
  • Terman Fellow, Stanford University (2014-2017)

Professional Education

  • PhD, University of California at Berkeley, Physics (2011)
  • BA, University of California at Berkeley, Physics and Mathematics (2004)

Contact

  • Academic
    laurenat@stanford.edu
    University - Faculty Department: Physics Position: Assoc Professor
    • Varian Physics Building
    • 382 Via Pueblo Mall
    • Stanford,  California  94305 

Additional Info

  • Mail Code: 4060

Links

Current Research and Scholarly Interests

Professor 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.

Projects

  • ATLAS Experiment at the LHC, CERN

    Location

    Geneva, Switzerland

  • The Light Dark Matter Experiment (LDMX)

    Location

    SLAC

2024-25 Courses

Stanford Advisees