Speakers

Director, CCA, Flatiron Institute

Julianne Dalcanton joined the Simons Foundation in September 2021 as the director of the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA). Her research specializes in the origins and evolution of galaxies.

Most recently, Dalcanton has worked with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to dissect images of nearby galaxies into millions of stars. Through these efforts, she has become one of the largest single users of the Hubble Space Telescope, most notably as principal investigator of a large HST Multicycle Treasury.

Prior to joining the foundation, Dalcanton served as professor of and chair of astronomy and an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Washington. She earned a Ph.D. in astrophysical sciences from Princeton University and a bachelor’s degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She completed postdoctoral training at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Throughout her career, Dalcanton has been recognized for achievements in the field of astrophysics. She has been awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a National Science Foundation CAREER award for junior faculty, a NASA Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship, a Wyckoff Faculty Fellowship through the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, the Mohler Prize from the University of Michigan and the Beatrice Tinsley Prize from the American Astronomical Society. She has also given the invited Eddington Lecture at the University of Cambridge, the Baird Lecture at the Ohio State University, the Spitzer Lectures at Princeton and the Sackler Lecture at Leiden University.

In addition to her research programs, Dalcanton has been widely involved in community governance and planning. She is currently serving on the steering committee of the Astro2020 Decadal review, after being vice chair of the Nearby Science Frontier Committee during the Astro2010 Decadal review. She has also previously been a member of NASA’s Cosmic Origins Program Analysis Group, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory’s Optical-NIR Long Range Planning Committee, and the Science Advisory Committee of the Giant Magellan Telescope, in addition to being a co-lead of the AURA “From Cosmic Birth to Living Earths” study of a possible next-generation large space telescope. Dalcanton has served as vice-chair of the Space Telescope Science Institute Council, a member of the Collaboration Advisory Council of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), chair of the SDSS Galaxy Working Group and a member of the AURA nominating committee.

As a third-generation teacher, Dalcanton is equally committed to education and outreach. She has taught more than 1,500 students, and regularly participates in outreach events. She has also written for popular science outlets, including Discover.

CREOL, The College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central Florida, USA

Andrea Blanco-Redondo's career path has led her to a wide range of experiences all over the world. Characterised by wanting to understand fundamental aspects of the field and the need to develop new technologies, Andrea has a unique perspective spanning academia and industry. She became interested in nonlinear optics near the end of her undergraduate study in Spain, her home country. Her university didn't offer the in-depth study she desired, so she travelled to the UK to do a research project on Raman amplification. This was the project that hooked Andrea on photonics

Program Lead for Thriving Departments

Sam McKagan is the Program Lead for Thriving Departments at the American Physical Society. She is the editorial director for the Effective Practices for Physics Programs (EP3) Initiative. She is the creator and director of PhysPort.org, a website that supports physics faculty in using research-based teaching and assessment in their classes and departments. She is also director of the Living Physics Portal, an online environment for physics faculty to share and discuss free curricular resources for teaching Introductory Physics for the Life Sciences, and the Physics and Equity Portal, an online environment for teachers integrating equity in high school physics.

She has over 15 years experience leading user-centered design, development, and research for physics education web resources at AAPT, APS, and universities and colleges throughout the country. She was a post-doc with the PhET Interactive Simulations project at the University of Colorado - Boulder, and has a Ph.D. from the University of Washington for theoretical work on Bose Einstein Condensation.

MacAdams Professor of Physics, University of California Berkeley

Hitoshi Murayama is a well-known theoretical particle physicist who works broadly, even on astrophysics, cosmology, and condensed matter physics. He has been a professor in the University of California, Berkeley, since 2000, and is also the founding director of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) at the University of Tokyo, serving from 2007 to 2018. Born in Japan, lived in Germany for four years and in the US for 21 years, served on advisory committees around the world, he is a multicultural global denizen. In October 2014, he was invited to give a speech at the United Nations headquarters in New York about how science unites people and brings peace. He received the APS Lilienfeld Prize, Yukawa Commemoration Prize in Theoretical Physics, Particle Physics Medal, and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

University of Colorado (Boulder)

Our research group explores the frontiers of light-matter interactions, where novel atomic and molecular matters are prepared in the quantum regime and light fields including both continuous wave and ulrashort pulses are exquisitely controlled. The experimental effort builds on and further advances precision measurement, ultracold atoms and molecules, quantum metrology, and ultrafast science and quantum control. We develop new technologies in the areas of high precision laser spectroscopy, atomic and molecular cooling and trapping, optical frequency metrology, quantum control, and ultrafast lasers; and apply these new technologies for research in fundamental physics. We investigate ultracold strontium atoms confined in optical lattices for high-accuracy atomic clocks and quantum information science. Precise control of optical frequency combs are applied for sensitive molecular detections, high resolution quantum control, and extreme nonlinear optics to explore new frontiers in spectroscopy. Ultracold molecules are being used for fundamental physics tests, studies of novel control of chemical reactions, and new quantum dynamics in ultracold matter. For a list of Professor Ye's latest publications, go to:

jila.colorado.edu/YeLabs/publications/scientific/year

UC Santa Barbara

Prof Andrea Young is a professor of physics at UC Santa Barbara. His career has focused on the development of van der Waals heterostructures—metamaterials consisting of interleaved atomically thin two dimensional crystals—and the exploration of phases that emerge from the entanglement of strongly interacting electrons. Young received a BA in physics and mathematics from Columbia University in 2006 year and a PhD in physics from Columbia in 2012 respectively. He was subsequently a Pappalardo Fellow at MIT and visiting scientist at the Weizmann Institute before starting his group at UC Santa Barbara in 2015. Young was a finalist for the Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists and received a New Horizons prize from the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, a Young Scientist Prize from the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the U.S Department of Defense, and has been awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and a Packard Fellowship.