Quantum Physics Theorist

Luca Victor Iliesiu

Assistant Professor

Luca Iliesiu received his BA in Physics from Princeton University in 2015. He remained there for his PhD which he received in 2020. He was then appointed as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, where he was part of the Simons Ultra Quantum Matter Collaboration, before starting as an assistant professor at Berkeley in January 2024.

Mike Zaletel

Associate Professor

Michael Zaletel joined the Department of Physics faculty in July 2018 and is the Thomas and Alison Schneider Chair. An Oakland native, he received his AA from Deep Springs College, his AB with highest honors in physics from Harvard University in 2009, and his Ph.D. at Berkeley working with Professor Joel Moore. In 2017, after a postdoctoral position in the quantum computing division of Microsoft Research at Station Q in Santa Barbara, he joined the faculty at Princeton Physics in 2017. He says he is...

Geoff Penington

Assistant Professor

Geoff Penington received his BA+MMath in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University in 2015, and his PhD in Physics, with Patrick Hayden, from Stanford University in 2020. He joined UC Berkeley in July 2020.

Research Interests

My research focuses on using ideas from the theory behind quantum computers (and, more generally, quantum information) in order to make progress in our understanding of the quantum mechanics of gravity. In particular, I have recently been working on understanding how the information that falls into a black hole ends up being encoded in the Hawking radiation...

Yasunori Nomura

Professor, Director, Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics

Yasunori Nomura received his Ph.D. from University of Tokyo in 2000, where he held a fellowship of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. He was a Miller Research Fellow at University of California, Berkeley from 2000 to 2002, and an Associate Scientist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory from 2002 to 2003. He joined the Berkeley physics faculty in July 2003. Awards and honors include: DOE Outstanding Junior Investigator Award (2004), Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2005), Hellman Fellow (2005), Simons Fellow in Theoretical Physics (2012), and American Physical Society...

Raphael Bousso

Professor and The Chancellor's Chair in Physics

Raphael Bousso received his Ph.D. from Cambridge University in 1998 and went on to become a Postdoc at Stanford University. He also worked at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara. In 2002/03 he was a fellow at the Harvard University physics department and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. In July 2003 he joined the physics department at UC Berkeley.

Research Interests

My interests are in theoretical cosmology and quantum gravity.

The central principles of quantum mechanics and of general relativity (our classical theory of gravity) come into...

Ehud Altman

Professor

Professor Ehud Altman received his Ph.D. from the Technion, Haifa in 2002. He was then a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard university for three years before joining the faculty of the Weizmann Institute of Science as a Yigal Alon fellow in 2005. He was promoted to the rank of Associate professor there in 2011. In 2010 he was awarded the young investigator prize from the Israel Physical Society and the Krill prize of the Wolf foundation. During the academic year 2012-2013 he was a Miller visiting professor at UC Berkeley. He joined the Physics department of UC Berkeley as a professor in the...

Mina Aganagic

Professor of Mathematics and Physics

Mina Aganagic received her BS (1995) and PhD (1999) degrees from California Institute of Technology. From 1999-2003 she had a postdoctoral appointment at Harvard University. She was an Assistant Professor of Physics and an Adjunct Professor of Mathematics at the University of Washington, Seattle from 2003-4. In 2004 she was appointed Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Physics at the University of California Berkeley. She was promoted to an Associate Professor in 2008, and to Professor in 2012.

Awards and Honors

Simons Investigator, Simons Foundation, 2016-20
Fellow, American...

Joel Moore

Professor

Joel Moore joined the physics department faculty as an assistant professor in January 2002. He received his A.B. summa cum laude in physics from Princeton University in 1995 and spent a Fulbright year abroad before graduate studies at MIT and a year at Bell Labs. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences (2022), a Simons Investigator (2013-2023), an elected Fellow of the American Physical Society (2013), and Chern-Simons Professor. He is also a Senior Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Research Interests

I am a theoretical physicist...

Dung-Hai Lee

Professor

Professor Dung-Hai Lee received his B.S. degree from the National Tsinghua University of Taiwan. He went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977 for graduate studies, and received his Ph.D. in physics in 1982. After staying at M.I.T. for another two years, he joined the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in 1984. Professor Lee spent eleven years at IBM, and came to Berkeley in February 1994.

Research Interests

Professor Lee is a theoretical condensed matter physicist. The principal goal of his research is to uncover new states of matter and understand their physical...