Kiyong Kim earned his Ph.D. at the University of Maryland under Prof. Howard Milchberg, and received the Marshall N. Rosenbluth Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award presented by the American Physical Society. He then received a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at Los Alamos National Laboratory before joining the UMD faculty in 2008. He is a recipient of an NSF Career Award and a Department of Energy Early Career Research Award. His research centers on ultrafast lasers and optical science, including laser interaction with atoms, molecules, solids, and plasmas.

Research Area:

• Plasma Physics
• Atomic, Molecular & Optical

Research Projects:

• Ultrafast optical, x-ray, and terahertz science
• High-energy density laboratory plasma

Centers & Institutes: Institute for Research in Electronics & Applied Physics; Maryland NanoCenter

• Physics 121: Fundamentals of Physics I
• Physics 122: Fundamentals of Physics II
• Physics 171: Introductory Physics Mechanics and Relativity
• Physics 275: Experimental Physics I
• Physics 276: Experimental Physics II
• Physics 373:Mathematical Methods for Physics II 
• Physics 485/685 Electronic Circuits

• Kiyong Kim Elected as a Fellow of Optica
• NSF Awards $1.6M for Laser Upgrades
• Ki-Yong Kim Promoted to Full Professor
• Ki-Yong Kim Receives DOE Grant
• Ki-Yong Kim Awarded the 2014 Richard A. Ferrell Distinguished Faculty Fellowship
• A Tabletop Source of Strong Terahertz Radiation

Anson Hook obtained his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2012. Afterwards, he did postdoctoral work at the Institute for Advanced Study and Stanford. He joined the faculty at the University of Maryland in 2018. Hook works in theoretical particle physics. He focuses on theories beyond the standard model (model building), analyzing the signatures of these new theories at current experiments (phenomenology) and designing new experiments to look for evidence of dark matter.

Research:

• Elementary Particles

Research Projects:

Centers & Institutes: Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics

• Physics 411: Intermediate Electricity and Magnetism
• Physics 274: Mathematical Methods for Physics I
• Physics 624: Advanced Quantum Mechanics
• Physics 851: Advanced Quantum Field Theory

• The Richard A. Ferrell Distinguished Faculty Fellowship
• New Members of the Department of Physics

Chris got his BS in Astronomy and Mathematics from the University of Southern California in 2007. Then he took a relatively short drive to University of California - San Diego for his PhD. He split his time (almost exactly in half) between San Diego and CERN where he worked on the CMS experiment and was fortunate to work directly on the Higgs boson discovery in the Higgs boson to two photons analysis during LHC's Run 1. After receiving his PhD in 2014, he became a Postdoctoral Researcher at Princeton University during LHC's Run 2.
While there he was a contributor to precision luminosity measurements, the observation of the Higgs boson decay to bottom quarks, and High Luminosity LHC outer tracker upgrades. Now Chris is further pursuing understanding underlying features of the Higgs boson via searches with two Higgs boson signatures.

Research:

• High Energy Physics

• Physics 171: Introductory Physics Mechanics and Relativity
• Physics 441: Introduction to Sub Atomic Physics

• US Joins FCC Effort: Maryland’s Impact
• When Higgs Fly

Will Fox joined the Department of Physics in January 2025, and is affiliated with the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics.  He received his B.A. in Physics from Princeton University and Ph.D. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.   Prior to the University of Maryland, he was Principal Research Physicist at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and a Lecturer in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University.   Between his finishing his undergraduate degree and starting graduate school, he worked for a year teaching math and physics at a high school in Kathmandu, Nepal. His research is in high-energy-density plasma physics and plasma astrophysics. He received the Thomas H. Stix Award for Outstanding Early Career Contributions to Plasma Physics Research from the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics in 2019, and the John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research from the APS Division of Plasma Physics in 2020.

Research Area:

• Plasma Physics

Centers & Institutes: Institute for Research in Electronics & Applied Physics

• Physics 410: Classical Mechanics

Ryo Mori joined UMD Physics in March 2025. Prior to joining Maryland, he was a Research Associate at the Institute for Solid State Physics, the University of Tokyo, Japan. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and his B.E. from Keio University, Japan. During his Ph.D. and postdoctoral research, he specialized in angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy in quantum materials with Alessandra Lanzara at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He was also awarded the prestigious PRESTO grant from the Japan Science and Technology Agency in 2024. His research group at Maryland will develop multidimensional spectroscopic approaches to explore exotic electronic phenomena in quantum materials and devices.

Research Areas: 

• Condensed Matter Experiment
• Quantum Science and Technology

The Mori group investigates emergent phenomena in quantum materials, exploring both their intrinsic states and those created through external driving or artificial design, with the goal of understanding the fundamental mechanisms and discovering novel quantum states. A central approach is the development and application of advanced photoemission spectroscopy techniques to probe the electronic structure and collective excitations with high precision. These efforts aim to uncover new states of matter and to clarify their potential roles in future quantum technologies. Additionally, the group engages in collaborative efforts to advance next-generation photoemission spectroscopy instrumentation and methodologies, pushing current boundaries by integrating experimental innovation with fundamental studies of quantum materials.

Centers & Institutes: Quantum Materials Center

Physics 276: Experimental Physics II

Assembling a Multi-Purpose Tool for Materials Science Research