Four physics faculty named to professorships
The School of Science appointed four Department of Physics faculty to named professorships. The faculty members selected for these positions receive additional support to pursue their research and develop their careers.
Marin Soljačić ’96 has been appointed the Cecil and Ida Green Professorship of Physics. He leads the Photonics & Modern Electro-Magnetics Group within the Condensed Matter Theory Group, and is a principal investigator in the Research Laboratory of Electronics. Soljačić’s research interests lie in wireless energy transfer, nanophotonics, and nonlinear optics, as well as various topics on intersection between AI and physics. With his partners, he founded a number of companies which have attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in investments, and employed hundreds of people. Other recognitions include the MacArthur “genius” award and the Blavatnik National Award.
Soonwon Choi has been named the Victor F. Weisskopf Career Development Assistant Professor of Physics. He is a researcher in the Center for Theoretical Physics, a division of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science. His research is focused on the intersection of quantum information and out-of-equilibrium dynamics of quantum many-body systems, specifically exploring the dynamical phenomena that occur in strongly interacting quantum many-body systems far from equilibrium and designing their novel applications for quantum information science. Recent contributions from Choi, recipient of the Inchon Award, include the development of simple methods to benchmark the quality of analog quantum simulators. His work allows for efficiently and easily characterizing quantum simulators, accelerating the goal of utilizing them in studying exotic phenomena in quantum materials that are difficult to synthesize in a laboratory.
Ronald Garcia Ruiz has been named the Thomas A. Frank Career Development Assistant Professor of Physics. A researcher with the Laboratory for Nuclear Science’s Hadronic Physics Group, and head of the Laboratory for Exotic Molecules and Atoms, he is focused on the development of laser spectroscopy techniques to investigate the properties of subatomic particles using atoms and molecules made up of short-lived radioactive nuclei. His experimental work provides unique information about the fundamental forces of nature, the properties of nuclear matter at the limits of existence, and the search for new physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. His team and collaborators developed the Resonance Ionization Spectroscopy Experiment (RISE) at the new U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Facility for Rare Isotope Beams.
Andrew Vanderburg, a member of the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, has been named the Bruno B. Rossi Career Development Assistant Professor of Physics. Vanderburg explores the use of machine learning, especially deep neural networks, in the detection of exoplanets, or planets that orbit stars other than the sun. He conducts astronomical observations using facilities on Earth like the Magellan Telescopes in Chile as well as space-based observatories like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the James Webb Space Telescope. Once the data from these telescopes are available, he and his team develop new analysis methods that help extract scientific value.
