Biography

Daniel Lathrop received a B.A. in physics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1987, and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1991. He then served at Yale University as a postdoctoral fellow, research affiliate, and lecturer, and as Assistant Professor at Emory University. He joined the University of Maryland in 1997, the year he received a Presidential Early Career Award from the National Science Foundation. Daniel Lathrop is now Professor of Physics and Professor of Geology and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. His research in the Nonlinear Dynamics group at Maryland focuses on turbulent fluid flows, geomagnetism, and experiments on superfluid helium. Dr. Lathrop served as the Director of the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics from 2006 to 2012. He received the Stanley Corrsin Award in 2012 from the American Physical Society for this work in quantum fluids. He is a UMD Distinguished Scholar-Teacher.

Biography

Theodore Kirkpatrick earned his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Rockefeller University in 1981. His research work is in the general area of strongly correlated and disordered electronic systems at low temperatures. Their prime objective of this project is to understand the phase transitions and other collective phenomena in such systems. One particular goal is to further develop and apply an effective field theory that has been developed by them and which allows for a systematic treatment of electronic systems with static impurities. The methods employed to study this problem include effective field theories, renormalization group techniques, and many- body perturbation theory. Specific systems for which this project is relevant include magnets with impurities, superconductors, and doped semiconductors. The conclusions drawn from these studies will be of interest to those concerned with the electrical and magnetic properties of matter.

Biography

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.

Biography

Xiangdong Ji received his B.S. from Tongji University and his Ph.D. in 1987 from Drexel University. His research includes theoretical studies of the nucleon structure in Quantum Chromodynamics and experimental search for Dark Matter particles using liquid xenon technology. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a recipient of the 2003 Outstanding Oversea Young Chinese Scientist Award. He is a UMD Distinguished University Professor.

Biography

Hassan Jawahery is a UMD Distinguished University Professor and the Gus T. Zorn Professor of Physics. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from Tufts University in 1981. He leads the UMD research group on Flavor Physics and CP Violation. He was one of the founding members of the BaBar experiment, served as it Physics Analysis Coordinator (2001-2002), and its Spokesperson (2006-2008). He is now a member of the LHCb experiment at the LHC collider at CERN. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2004 and the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2010. 

Biography

Ted Jacobson earned a BA at Reed College in Physics and Mathematics (1977), and a PhD at the University of Texas, Austin in Physics (1983). After postdoctoral positions at UCSB and Brandeis, he joined the University of Maryland faculty in 1988. He has had numerous research interests, including models of discrete spacetime, quantum gravity, sensitivity of Hawking radiation to short distance physics, analog condensed matter models of Hawking radiation, black hole entropy, constraints on Lorentz symmetry violation in particle physics and gravitation, and force-free plasmas. He is the recipient of a University of Maryland Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award, and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He holds a Distinguished Visiting Research Chair position at Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada. In 2018, he was named a UMD Distinguished University Professor.

Enjoy his October 2020 public lecture on electromagnetic waves, sponsored by the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics.

Biography

Bei Lok Hu received his B.A. in 1967 from the University of California - Berkeley and his Ph.D. in 1972 from Princeton University. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a Senior Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

Publications List

Biography

Kara Hoffman received her Ph.D. at Purdue University, followed by postdoctoral appointments at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland and the University of Chicago. She joined the UMD faculty as an assistant professor in 2004, was promoted to associate professor in 2010 and professor in 2015. Recognition has included the NSF Career Award, the CMPS Board of Visitors Distinguished Junior Faculty Award, and the Purdue University physics department's Outstanding Alumna Award in 2013. Her current work is in particle astrophysics, centered on the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the Askaryan Radio Array at the South Pole. Physics World named IceCube’s first observations of cosmic neutrinos the 2013 Breakthrough of the Year.

Biography

Adil Hassam is Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (Plasma Physics). Dr. Hassam received BS and MS degrees in Physics from MIT in 1974 and a Ph.D. in Astrophysical Sciences from Princeton University in 1978. Since then he has been a member of the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics at the University of Maryland. His research has ranged from laboratory and fusion plasmas to magnetospheric and solar plasmas. His current interests are in ideal and dissipative MHD and in innovation in fusion research. He has authored or co-authored over 100 publications. He is a recipient of the Outstanding Teaching Award from the Department of Physics and an Honorable Mention for the Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching. He has served as President of the University Fusion Association (2003-4).

Biography

Carter Hall received his B.S. degree summa cum laude from Virginia Tech, and his Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he was awarded the Goldhaber Prize and Wallace-Noyes Fellowship. After his postdoctoral appointment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, he joined the University of Maryland as an assistant professor in 2006. He has received a Department of Energy Early Career Award and the CMNS Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. His research is on the border between nuclear and particle physics, including the EXO experiment seeking Majorana neutrinos and the LUX and LZ experiments searching for weakly interacting dark matter.

Biography

Mohammad Hafezi studied for two years at Sharif University before completing his undergraduate degree at École Polytechnique in 2003. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard University in 2009. He was a senior research associate at the Joint Quantum Institute before joining the faculty of UMD. His group aims at the theoretical and experimental investigation of quantum properties of light-matter interaction, for applications in classical and quantum information processing and sensing. He received a Sloan Research Fellowship and Office of Naval Research Young Investigator award in 2015.

Centers & Institutes: Joint Quantum Institute, Quantum Technology Center

Biography

Nicholas Hadley is an experimental high energy physicist. He is currently a member of the CMS experiment at CERN, where he searches for new physics at the world’s highest energy accelerator. He was one of the co-leaders of the Dzero experiment’s top group at the time of the top quark discovery. He has been a member of the Program Advisory Committees at Brookhaven, Cornell, and Fermilab, and is now a member the Canada ATLAS review committee. He served as the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Education in the Physics Department of the University of Maryland from 2007 to 2010.

Biography

Richard Greene is known for his many years of productive research on the physics of novel superconducting materials, at the IBM research laboratories and at the University of Maryland. He and his collaborators discovered the first known polymeric and two-dimensional organic superconductors in the 1970s. Since 1986, Dr. Greene has done extensive research on high-Tc superconductors, primarily electron-doped cuprates and iron-based materials. He has written several well-known reviews about these two superconducting systems. He was also involved in the development of the relaxation technique for specific heat measurements, a technique that is now widely used in the Quantum Design PPMS. His publications are very highly cited, with over 33,000 citations and an h-index of 96. He was the founding director of the Center for Superconductivity Research at the University of Maryland in 1989. He is a Fellow of the APS and the AAAS and the APS Dissertation Award for Experimental Condensed Matter Physics is named in his honor. In 2022, he was named a University of Maryland Distinguished University Professor.

Biography

Jordan Goodman is a Distinguished University Professor and the former Chair of Physics Department at the University of Maryland. His area of research, Particle Astrophysics, studies cosmic radiation to better understand the properties of elementary particles and the processes in space that produce these particles. This field blends elements of high energy physics and astrophysics. Starting with his Ph.D. work, which showed evidence for an abundance of heavy elements such as iron in high energy cosmic rays, he has worked to understand the nature of cosmic rays which hit the earth. Previously, his work has concentrated on two experimental efforts-- Milagro and IceCube. He is now the Principal Investigator and US Spokesperson of the HAWC Gamma Ray Observatory. He is a UMD Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and Distinguished University Professor.

Biography

Michelle Girvan received her B.S. in 1999 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her Ph.D. in 2003 from Cornell University. Her research combines methods from statistical mechanics, dynamical systems, and graph theory to address interdisciplinary, network-related problems. She is interested in both broad theoretical approaches to complex networks as well as specific applications, especially to information cascades, epidemiology, and genetic regulatory networks.

In a 2019 podcast, she discussed her work in chaos and artificial intelligence.

In 2022, she was named a UMD Distinguished Scholar-Teacher. 

Biography

Sylvester James Gates Jr. holds the Clark Leadership Chair in Science. During his decades with the UMD Department of Physics, he was named a Distinguished University Professor, University System of Maryland Regents Professor and John S. Toll Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland. Known for his pioneering work in supersymmetry and supergravity, areas closely related to string theory, Gates was also an affiliate mathematics professor. Gates earned two Bachelor of Science degrees (in physics and mathematics) and his Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1984, Gates co-authored Superspace: One Thousand and One Lessons in Supersymmetry, the first comprehensive book on supersymmetry, and joined the UMD faculty as an associate professor. Four years later, he became the first African American to hold an endowed chair in physics at a major U.S. research university.

The author of more than 200 research papers and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Gates has been featured in dozens of video documentaries, including five in 2015. For his contribution to science and research, he received the National Medal of Science from President Obama in 2013. Gates has served on the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, the National Commission on Forensic Science, and the Maryland State Board of Education. He is a strong advocate for science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. He has  served as president of both the National Society of Black Physicists and the American Physical Society.

PCAST Appointment by President Obama
Regents Professor Appointment by Chancellor Kirwan

Biography

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.

Biography

Sarah Eno received her Ph.D. from the University of Rochester and did postdoctoral work at the University of Chicago. She has been a member of the AMY experiment at Tristan, the CDF and D0 experiments at FNAL, and the CMS experiment at the LHC. She is interested in studies of the weak force, studies of QCD using EWK vector bosons, searches for new particles, calorimeters, and radiation resistant scintillators. She is a fellow of the APS, has served on HEPAP and is a UMD Distinguished Scholar-Teacher.

Biography

Ted Einstein received his B.S. in 1969 from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in 1973 from the University of Pennsylvania. He is an internationally recognized physicist addressing exciting questions in the field of theoretical condensed matter physics, especially in the area of surface physics. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Fellow of the American Vacuum Society and a recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Distinguished Senior U.S. Scientist Award.

Research

Research Areas:

• Condensed Matter Theory
• Quantum Science and Technology

Centers & Institutes: Condensed Matter Theory Center

Biography

Tom Cohen is a Professor and Associate Chair in Physics. He received his A.B. in 1980 from Harvard College and his Ph.D. in 1985 from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and was an NSF Presidential Young Investigator from 1990-1995. His exceptional teaching ability has been recognized through several awards including the Celebrating Teaching Award, the Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award.

Biography

Professor Chacko is a theoretical physicist, and a founding member of the Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics (MCFP). His research interests lie in elementary particle physics, the field that studies the fundamental constituents of matter and their interactions. The primary focus of Professor Chacko's research is the study of new theories that can explain some of the puzzles of the current Standard Model of particle physics, and that can be tested by current or upcoming experiments. He has made contributions to our understanding of weak scale supersymmetry, extra dimensions, grand unification, composite Higgs models, dark matter, baryogenesis and neutrino physics. Professor Chacko's work has connections to many different types of experiments, including the Large Hadron Collider, the direct and indirect detection of dark matter, precision observations of the cosmic microwave background, neutrino oscillation studies, searches for rare processes and short range tests of Newton's law of gravitation.

Biography

Alessandra Buonanno received her Ph.D. from the University of Pisa, followed by a postdoctoral work at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques in France and a Richard C. Tolman Postdoctoral Prize fellowship at Caltech. Returning to France, she worked for CNRS at the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris and Laboratoire Astroparticule et Cosmologie in Paris before accepting a faculty position at UMD in 2005. She received a Sloan Fellowship in 2006 and she was the William and Flora Hewlett Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2011-2012. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the International Society of General Relativity and Gravitation, and a Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute. In 2014, she accepted the position of Director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in Potsdam; she remains a Research Professor at UMD. Her work spans several topics in gravitational physics, in particular theoretical and phenomenological aspects of gravitational-wave physics and astrophysics.

Biography

Alberto Belloni received his B.S. in 2002 from the University of Pisa and Scuola Normale Superiore and his Ph.D. in 2007 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the CMS Collaboration at the beginning of 2013 and is involved in the upgrade of the Hadronic Calorimeter (HCAL).

Biography

Elizabeth Beise is a Professor of Physics and the Associate Provost for Academic Planning and Programs. She earned her B.A. in Physics from Carleton College in 1981, and her Ph.D. in Physics in 1988 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She joined UMD in 1993 after a research scientist position in the Kellogg Radiation Lab at the California Institute of Technology. Her research in experimental nuclear physics focuses on the use of electromagnetic and weak probes of the internal structure of protons, neutrons and light nuclei, and on the use of nuclear physics techniques to test fundamental symmetries of nature. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Beise is a UMD Distinguished Scholar-Teacher.

Biography

Paulo Bedaque received his B.S. in 1985 from the Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil and his Ph.D. in 1994 from the University of Rochester. Following this, he served as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology and then at the Institute for Nuclear Theory at the University of Washington. He joined the scientific staff at Lawrencey Berkeley Lab in 2001 and joined UMD in 2006. Professor Bedaque's research career has focused on the interface of nuclear physics and particle physics with an emphasis on various aspects of QCD. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Biography

Distinguished Physicist Jayanth R. Banavar, whose research frequently involves interdisciplinary collaboration with the life sciences, is  a former dean of the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS).

Prior to his appointment in 2011, Banavar led the Department of Physics at Pennsylvania State University for 12 years. Much of his recent work has applied the techniques of statistical physics to solve interdisciplinary problems, explaining, for example, why biological molecules tend to curl up into helices, or to explain why coral reefs support such a rich biodiversity. Frequently, the goal has been to identify an underlying mathematical principle to provide an elegant explanation of natural phenomena.

Banavar served as Distinguished Professor and George A. and Margaret M. Downsbrough Department Head of Physics at Pennsylvania State University. He received a bachelor of science with honors and a master of science in physics from Bangalore University. He earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Pittsburgh. A fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he has more than 250 publications in refereed journals, 11 book chapters, a book he co-edited and three patents.

Biography

Drew Baden has worked in many aspects of high-energy physics over the past 20 years, and was part of the D0 collaboration at Fermilab which, along with the CDF team, discovered the top quark in 1995. Since the late 1990s, he has been part of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider. He and his team are specifically responsible for designing, prototyping, testing and manufacturing the "trigger" electronics for the CMS hadron calorimeter.

Biography

Thomas Antonsen graduated from Cornell University where he received a B.S. degree in electrical engineering in 1973 and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 1976 and 1977, respectively. His research interests include the theory of magnetically confined plasmas, the theory and design of high power sources of coherent radiation, nonlinear dynamics in fluids, and the theory of the interaction of intense laser pulses and plasmas. He is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, a fellow of the American Physical Society, Division of Plasma Physics, and a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He is a UMD Distinguished University Professor.

Biography

Steven Anlage received his Ph.D. in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology. He is a member of the Quantum Materials Center at UMD, where he leads experimental research activities in superconducting metamaterials, quantum chaos, and various types of quantitative high-resolution near-field microscopy. His research focus is on the basic physics of superconducting materials (both natural and artificial) and addressing fundamental questions concerning wave propagation in complex scattering systems. He is also active in developing applications that exploit time-reversal invariance and spatial reciprocity for electromagnetic wave propagation, such as directed communication and wireless power transfer. He is a UMD Distinguished Scholar-Teacher.