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Nexus is a group of Black theoretical physicists and scientists made up of senior and junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows, phd students, and undergraduates. The group spans a spectrum of interests and expertise in theoretical physics from cosmology to black hole physics to string theory and quantum gravity. The group has been meeting weekly over the past 6 months with the goal of forming interdisciplinary collaborations to discuss ideas and papers, engage with guest speakers, and to educate each other.
The aim of the short summer workshop is to bring together members of the Nexus group for an intense week-long workshop focused on incubating and launching collaborative and cross-disciplinary research projects. The pilot program will serve as a prototype for an ongoing effort to establish NSBP Theory institute.
Participant Bios:
Stephon Alexander, Founder of NeXus
Stephon Alexander is a theoretical physicist, musician and author whose work is at the interface between cosmology, particle physics and quantum gravity. He works on the connection between the smallest and largest entities in the universe, pushing Einstein’s theory of curved space-time to extremes, beyond the big bang with subatomic phenomena.
Alexander is a professor of physics at Brown University and the president of the National Society of Black Physicists. He had previous appointments at Stanford University, Imperial College, Pennsylvania State University, Dartmouth College and Haverford College. Alexander is a specialist in the field of string theory and cosmology, where the physics of superstrings are applied to address longstanding questions in cosmology. In 2001, he co-invented the model of inflation based on higher-dimensional hypersurfaces in string theory called D-Branes. In such models, the early universe emerged from the destruction of a higher-dimensional D-brane, which ignites a period of rapid expansion of space often referred to as ‘cosmic inflation.’ He also co-pioneered a modified theory of general relativity based on Chern-Simons theory. This Chern-Simons general relativity has applications in gravitational wave physics, cosmology and astrophysics.
Jahmour Givans:
I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Physics and a member of the Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics (CCAPP) at The Ohio State University. My advisor is Prof. Chris Hirata. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, I could be frequently found attending CCAPP events such as Astro Coffee, Cosmology Lunch, and the CCAPP Seminar in-person. Now you can find me in attendance virtually over Zoom.
My primary research questions are: a) What is dark energy? b) How can we make higher-precision measurements of cosmological parameters?
As a theoretical cosmologist, I approach these problems by constructing improved frameworks to extract cosmological information. I do this through a combination of analytical work, simulations, and comparisons to real data. In each of my past projects, I made these frameworks publicly available for use by the broader precision cosmology community. For one of those, I helped implement the framework directly into the weak lensing pipeline for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope(formerly WFIRST). A similar plan is underway for implementing my improved Lyman-alpha forest biasing model into the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Lyman-alpha pipeline.
I am a member of the American Physical Society (APS), the National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP), and the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS).
I am also a member of two collaborations: I sit on the detector working group for the Roman Space Telescope and I am part of the Lyman-alpha working group for DESI. In May 2020 I became a founding member of the DESI Weekly Research Forum organizing committee.
Marcell Howard:
Broadly speaking, I am interested in studying modified theories of gravity and how they can possibly lead to a more complete picture of our universe. My research thus far has been focused on constraining these models using observations of large scale structure.
Tatsuya Daniel:
Tats is a first-year PhD student at Brown University who completed his undergraduate studies at MIT. Tats is interested in theories of quantum gravity, and he has recently been studying how geometric algebra can be used to provide new insight into theories of acoustic and water waves, electromagnetism, and gravity. He is also interested in, broadly speaking, cosmology and general relativity.
Outside of physics, Tats is an avid distance runner and musician. He also likes to travel and learn languages.
Morgane König:
I am a PhD candidate in Theoretical cosmology at the University of California Davis.
My work focuses on particle physics, cosmology and theories of gravity.
As a theoretical physicist, I focus on model building in the framework of high energy physics, in order to understand, among other things, the nature of dark energy, dark matter and the mechanism behind inflation.
I am currently involved in projects tackling the nature of dark matter and dark energy using axions as well as projects looking for signatures of parity violation in the universe.
In September 2021 I will start my joint Postdoctoral appointment at Dartmouth College and MIT.
When I am not writing equations, you can find me in the ballet studio, at museum exhibitions or on the slopes during the winter months.
I am also a member of NSBP (the National Society of Black Physicists) and the student leader of the NEX'US initiative.
Elizabeth Meador:
I am currently a Physics PhD Student at the University of Pittsburgh. I recently graduated from Whitman College as the first black student in both their Physics and Astronomy programs in May 2020. My field speciality in astrophysics is mostly aligned with theoretical cosmology guided by observations. I am particularly fascinated with the subfields of particle astrophysics, large scale structure and cosmology. I am moved to learn about the universe on both miniscule and macroscales in an effort to understand the evolution and development of the early universe to the magnificent structure that we see today. My purpose in joining NEXUS (besides getting to network with amazing professionals in the field) is to be a part of a community of both similar and different minds because I believe that in these kinds of hives are where inspiration and exploration are bred. Growing communities like these where people are learning from each other at different stages in their lives promote academic and mental health in ways that I am sure we all have more to learn about. Besides participating in my PhD program and getting to learn more about the universe, I love creative writing and baking, so please don’t hesitate to reach out! My website is: epmeador.com and I made a site meant to help younger underrepresented minorities in STEM some time ago which I call Afrosteminism (afrosteminism.org).
My twitter and insta handles if interested are: @afrophysicist__
Nico Cooper:
Nico Cooper recently graduated from Princeton University, and will pursue a PhD in physics at the University of Kentucky. His work has broadly spanned high energy physics, but focuses on mathematical physics and superconformal field theories. Currently his is a part of the Causeway Postbaccalaureate program in math at Northwestern, and is on the NSBP Student Council.
Dr. Delilah Gates:
Delilah Gates is a graduate student in the Physics Department at Harvard University. Before joining Harvard, she earned two Bachelors of Science, one physics and one math, from the University of Maryland, College Park. She studies high-spin black holes and gravity working to analytically characterize observational signatures of near extremal Kerr black holes using the emergent near-horizon conformal symmetry. Her interests include (near) extremal black hole geometries, black hole binaries, AdS/CFT correspondence, and black hole entropy.
Dr. Ibrahima Bah:
I am an assistant professor in theoretical physics at John Hopkins.
I completed my PhD at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2012. After that, I went on to a joint postdoctoral position at the University of Southern California and The Institut de Physique Théorique at Saclay in France. In 2015, I joined the University of California, San Diego particle theory group as a UC President's postdoctoral fellow. In January 2017, I will be Joining Johns Hopkins Particle theory group as an assistant professor in physics.
My general research interest is in theoretical high-energy physics and cosmology. In my research I explore the relations between quantum field theories, string theory and gravity via the framework of holography. I am also interested in fundamental aspects of black holes and their role in nature. My research work is part of a larger research program in high-energy physics whose main goal is to understand a quantum theory of gravity.
Dr. Kassahun Betre:
My name is Kassahun Betre. I am Assistant Professor of Physics at San Jose State University. I received my PhD in Theoretical High Energy Physics from Stanford University. My current area of research interest is in background independent and relational approaches to quantum gravity. There are questions about the nature of spacetime that can not be answered with the General theory of Relativity such as the explanation of the entropy of black holes or the nature of spacetime singularities like the Big Bang. A more fundamental quantum theory of spacetime is believed to provide the answers. This requires finding principles more basic and fundamental than spacetime. But space and time are the most universal and basic foundations on which physical theories are built upon; what can be more basic than spacetime? If we think of spacetime as representing a certain type of spatio-temporal relationships among constituents, then the underlying relationships themselves become more fundamental than their description through spacetime. So one can describe a dynamical quantum system purely relationally without reference to a background spacetime. This is achieved using combinatorial objects such as graphs and abstract simplicial complexes. The question then becomes, how does something resembling the spacetime of GR emerge from combinatorial microscopic degrees of freedom with no geometric properties? The approach I’m interested in defines quantum systems relationally on graphs and studies their phases and emergent geometric properties in an attempt to find systems with an emergent order that approximates the spacetime of GR.