Jay Sau received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 2008. He is a theoretical condensed matter physicist with a broad interest in many particle physics relevant to experiments. At present, he is predominantly interested in applying topological principles to create protected solid-state and cold-atomic systems for quantum information processing.
Research Area:
Notable Publications:
Eun-Suk Seo earned her Ph.D. in 1991 from Louisiana State University. She joined UMD in 1991 and became a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2010. Her research focuses on cosmic ray origin, acceleration, and propagation including searches for exotic matter, such as antimatter and dark matter using direct measurements of galactic cosmic rays by flying instruments on balloons or spacecraft. Professor Seo has worked on numerous projects for the detection and characterization of cosmic rays, including four major international collaborations: ATIC (the Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter), AMS (the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, intended for deployment on the International Space Station), BESS (the Balloon-borne Experiment with a Superconducting magnet Spectrometer) and CREAM (the Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass program). She is the Principal Investigator for CREAM and Co-Investigator for the others.
Research Area:
Research Projects:
Centers & Institutes: Center for Experimental Fundamental Physics, Institute for Physical Science & Technology, Joint Space-Science Institute
Peter Shawhan did graduate research in Physics at the University of Chicago, studying CP violation in neutral K meson decays, and earned his Ph.D. in 1999. He then spent seven years at Caltech as a Millikan Prize Fellow and Senior Scientist, helping to establish observing operations and data analysis for the LIGO gravitational wave detectors. As a University of Maryland Physics faculty member since 2006, Shawhan's primary research revolves around searching for gravitational wave signals from neutron stars, black holes, collapsing stars, and other extreme astrophysical sources. Detection of these elusive signals, beginning with the first spectacular event in September 2015 from a pair of merging black holes, has confirmed a prediction of Einstein's general theory of relativity and is revealing the properties of gravitational-wave sources and enabling tests of the theory of gravity. Other research interests include laboratory tests of gravity and high-energy astrophysics space missions.
Research Area:
Research Interests:
Centers & Institutes: Joint Space-Science Institute
Andris Skuja is Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he has been on the faculty for more than 30 years. Dr. Skuja has extensive experience in international high-energy projects, and has worked at the DESY accelerator facility in Germany and the OPAL experiment at CERN prior to joining the Large Hadron Collider's Compact Muon Solenoid collaboration. For CMS, Dr. Skuja serves as Project Manager for the hadron calorimeter, a position that entails considerable travel and international scientific and engineering liaison.