Four assistant professors have recently joined UMD Physics.
Maissam Barkeshli received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Afterward, he was a Simons Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University and a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft's Station Q at UC Santa Barbara. He works on several topics in complex quantum many-body phenomena and is a member of the Condensed Matter Theory Center and Joint Quantum Institute.
Brian Swingle received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and held postdoctoral positions at Harvard University, the It from Qubit Simons Collaboration and Stanford University. He researches quantum information and is a member of the Condensed Matter Theory Center, the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science and the Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics.
Zohreh Davoudi received her Ph.D. at the University of Washington and recently completed a postdoctoral appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She studies strongly-interacting systems of hadrons and nuclei, using analytical and computational methods such as effective field theories and lattice quantum chromodynamics. She will be a member of the Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics and hold a joint appointment at Brookhaven National Lab through the Riken Fellowship program.
Anson Hook will begin in the spring semester of 2018, after completing a postdoctoral appointment at Stanford University, where he received his Ph.D. in 2012. He has also held a postdoctoral appointment at the Institute for Advanced Studies. Hook researches the extent to which exotic field theory phenomena can be used to solve existing problems in particle physics. He will be a member of the Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics.
In addition, two members of the Department of Engineering and the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics (IREAP) now hold appointments in Physics.
Associate Professor Mohammad Hafezi received his Ph.D. at Harvard University. His interests include the theoretical and experimental investigation of strongly-correlated systems and topological physics, nanophotonics and optomechanics, and hybrid quantum systems. He is a Fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute.
Professor Edo Waks received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He researches nanoscale photonic and semiconductor devices for applications in quantum computation, communication, and sensing. He is a Fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute.