Particle Physics Theorist

Raúl Briceño

Assistant Professor

Raúl Briceño was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. In 2013, he received his PhD in Physics from the University of Washington. He then joined the Center for Theoretical and Computational Physics at Jefferson Lab as a postdoc. After three years as a postdoc, in 2016 he became the Nathan Isgur Research Fellow at Jefferson Lab. Shortly after, in 2017 he started an Assistant Professor position at Old Dominion University with a joint appointment at Jefferson Lab as a Staff Scientist. His research largely focuses on aspects of theoretical nuclear and particle physics. In 2023, he joined the...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

Mahiko Suzuki

Professor Emeritus

B.S., 1961; M.S., 1963; Ph.D., 1965, University of Tokyo; Research Fellow, Caltech 1965-66; R.C. Tolman Fellow, Caltech 1966-67. Member, Institute for Advanced Study, 1967-68; Research Associate, University of Tokyo, 1968-69; Visiting Associate Professor, Columbia University 1969-70; Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley, 1970-74; Professor, University of California 1974-present; Fulbright Scholar 1965-68; J.S. Guggenheim Fellow 1976-77; Japan Society for Promotion of Science Fellow 1995; Fellow, American Physical Society.

Research Interests

The Standard Model of...

Korkut Bardakci

Professor Emeritus

Korkut Bardakci received his B.S. from Robert College, Turkey in 1957 and his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in 1962. After postdoctoral appointments at the University of Minnesota and the Institute for Advanced Study, he joined the UC Berkeley Physics Department as an assistant professor in 1966. He has been a Sloan Foundation fellow, a Guggenheim fellow and an Overseas visiting fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, England.

Research Interests

I am interested in string theories in general and in the problem of tachyon condensation in the bosonic string in particular....