When there are vacancies, I recruit research students through the Harvey Mudd Undergraduate Research Opportunities (URO) portal. URO rounds typically occur in late summer, late fall, and late winter. Students at all 5C campuses are eligible to apply; if you don’t have an HMC login, please email me for information on how to apply. If you would like to find out more about research in particle theory outside of a URO cycle, I encourage you to check out the research overview and materials on this website. I’m happy to answer any questions you might have by email or during office hours.

One of the reasons that particle physics is a fascinating subject is that it brings together many different areas of physics to answer fundamental questions about nature, including classical mechanics, relativity, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, astrophysics and cosmology. All of this means that a student starting out doing work in particle physics will have to dive in and learn as they go - it's not possible to learn everything before starting! However, doing research in particle physics offers you the opportunity to engage with exciting current research topics while coming to a deeper understanding of many of the subjects that you encounter in the Core or physics major course sequence.

Group Members 2024-25

Past Group Members

Senior Thesis Students

  • Tanvi Krishnan (2022-23, external thesis with ICARUS), Ph.D. student in physics at Harvard University

  • Albany Blackburn (2020-23), Ph.D. student in physics at UC Berkeley

  • Coleman Gliddon (2022-23), Ph.D. student in earth, atmospheric, and planetary science at MIT

  • Jiaping Derek Li (2022-23), Ph.D. student in physics at Stanford University

  • Luis Hidalgo (2021-22), Ph.D. student in physics at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

  • Benjamin Khoury (2021-22), works at Areté Associates

  • Rafael Porto (2020-22), Ph.D. student in physics at Rutgers University

  • Ngan Steve Nguyen (2019-21), Ph.D. student in physics at Johns Hopkins University

  • Jane Schlesinger (2019-21), Ph.D. student in chemical physics at University of Minnesota

  • Ina Flood (2018-20), Ph.D. student in physics at University of Maryland

  • Matthew Fox (2018-20), Perimeter Scholars International student ‘22, Ph.D. student in physics at University of Colorado, Boulder

  • Duncan Rocha (2019-20, external thesis with ATLAS), Ph.D. student in physics at University of Chicago

  • Jatin Abacousnac (2018-19), Ph.D. student in physics at New York University

Summer Research Students

  • Conor Floyd (2023)

  • Isabel Godoy (2023)

  • Antonia Hekster (2023)

  • Ashley Kim (2023)

  • Stephanie Allen (2022-23)

  • Tian Dong (2022-23), Perimeter Scholars International student ‘25

  • Freya Derdeyn (2022)

  • Lucien Mallett (2021-22)

  • Kanalu Monaco (2022), software engineer at Duolingo

  • Bryce Tu Chi (2022)

  • Mavis Stone (2020), Ph.D. student in Earth systems science at Stanford University

  • Maxwell Thum (2020), Ph.D. student in mathematics at University of Arizona

  • Mason Acevedo (2019), full-stack engineer at Pure Storage

  • Anna Barth (2018), Ph.D. student in physics at Cornell University

  • Andrés Cook (2018), Ph.D. student in physics at University of Chicago

Semester Research Students

  • Arianna Meinking (2021-22), Ph.D. student in physics at Duke University

  • Chris Ranlett (2021-22), Ph.D. student in physics at Iowa State University

  • Carson McVay (2021), Ph.D. student in physics at UT Austin

  • Victoria Lloyd (2020), Ph.D. student in physics at Stony Brook University

  • Haoxing Du (2019), Perimeter Scholars International student ‘20, Ph.D. student in physics at UC Berkeley