In the 21st century humanity faces three formidable and intertwined challenges: (i) climate change, (ii) geopolitical instability, and (iii) economic and social inequality. There is one tool that is key to the resolution of all three challenges: energy! The availability...
The theory describing dark matter remains completely unknown, and requires new search ideas to resolve its identity. It turns out that stars and planets can be ideal playgrounds to discover dark matter. In this talk, I will review a range...
Astrophysical shock waves are among the most powerful particle accelerators in the Universe. Generated by violent interactions of supersonic plasma flows with the interstellar or intergalactic medium, shocks are inferred to amplify magnetic fields and accelerate electrons and protons to...
The power of quantum information lies in its capacity to be non-local, encoded in correlations among entangled particles. Yet our ability to produce, understand, and exploit such correlations is hampered by the fact that the interactions between particles are ordinarily...
How does diversity intertwine along a pathway as a researcher, teacher, public intellectual, presidential advisor, husband, and father (along with 11D supergravity)? This will be recounted by our speaker. Event Poster (PDF)
Quantized sound waves---phonons---govern the elastic response of crystalline materials, and also play an integral part in determining their thermodynamic properties and electrical response (e.g., by binding electrons into superconducting Cooper pairs). The physics of lattice phonons and elasticity is absent...
The fast growth of portable power sources for transportation and grid-scale stationary storage presents great opportunities for battery development. The invention of lithium ion batteries has been recognized with Nobel Prize in 2019. How to increase energy density, reduce cost...
What is really inside a proton? The fundamental building blocks of the proton, quarks and gluons, have been known for decades. However, we still have an incomplete understanding of how these particles and their dynamics give rise to the quantum...
The interstellar medium is the "stuff between the stars" in galaxies: the dynamic, turbulent environment out of which new stars are born. Understanding the processes that govern star formation and galactic evolution are areas of active research, and open questions...
