Theoretical condensed matter physicist Maissam Barkeshli joined the UMD Department of Physics as an Assistant Professor and a JQI Fellow in August, 2016.
Barkeshli received his PhD in Physics from MIT in 2010 following a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a BA in Physics from UC Berkeley. He was a Simons Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University (2010-2013) and a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft's Station Q, located at UC Santa Barbara (2013-2016).
He works on complex many-body phenomena involving condensed matter physics, quantum field theory, quantum topology, and quantum information theory. He also works on the science of deep learning, studying fundamental principles underlying the inner workings of modern AI models. In 2018, he was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation.
Research Area:
Centers & Institutes: Joint Quantum Institute, Condensed Matter Theory Center
Notable papers:
M. Barkeshli, P. Bonderson, M. Cheng, Z. Wang, Symmetry, Defects, and Gauging of Topological Phases," arXiv:1410.4540
M. Barkeshli, E. Berg, S. Kivelson, "Coherent transmutation of electrons into fractionalized anyons," Science, 346 6210 (2014)
Victor Yakovenko is a Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and was a recipient of the prestigious David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering and the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. He is a theoretical physicist with more than 35 years of research experience in studying electronic properties of various materials. In addition, he joined the emergent econophysics movement around year 2000 by publishing his first econophysics paper. Over the next twenty years, his ideas became increasingly popular and initiated an expanding wave of follow-up papers by many researchers around the world. The work of Yakovenko has also been covered in popular media, such as the New York Times Magazine, American Scientist, New Scientist, Australian Financial Review, Science magazine and the UK Engineering and Technology Magazine. Yakovenko has given about 150 invited talks on this subject. He received his M.S. in Physics and Engineering from the Moscow Physical-Technical Institute in 1984 and his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, Moscow in 1987, where he was also employed as Research Scientist. In 1991 he began a Postdoc at the Department of Physics, Rutgers University. In 1993 he joined the University of Marlyland, College Park as Assistant Professor and became Associate Professor in 1999 and Full Professor in 2004.
Research:
Centers & Institutes: Condensed Matter Theory Center; Joint Quantum Institute; Physics Frontier Center
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:
Victor Galitski received his Ph.D. in theoretical condensed matter physics under Prof. A. Larkin at the University of Minnesota after earning a Ph.D. in applied math (in a record 18 months)at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MEPhI). He joined UMD as an assistant professor in 2006. He has received a Simons Investigator Award, CMPS Board of Visitors Faculty Award, and an NSF Career Award. He recently finished translating from Russian to English a textbook, “Exploring Quantum Mechanics: A Collection of 700+ Solved Problems for Students, Lecturers, and Researchers" co-written by his grandfather, physicist V.M. Galitskii. He studies several subfields of condensed matter theory.
Research:
Research Projects:
Centers & Institutes: Condensed Matter Theory Center; Joint Quantum Institute