Junior collaborators

Having recently started at MIT, I am still working with several students at UC Santa Cruz. SCIPP is a warm and friendly place, and many UCSC undergrads choose to pursue a research project with the theory group. Some of these students have used their research with me as the basis for an undergraduate thesis. They’ve each put in a great deal of effort and creativity, and I’m very proud of what we’ve done together!

Are you an MIT undergrad or grad student interested in working on a project like these? Please get in touch with me!

Current UC Santa Cruz students

 
Samuel_English6.jpg

Sam EnglisH [inspire]

Sam is working with me to understand connections between the dark matter in our galaxy and the behavior of Sgr A*, our supermassive black hole. There may be interesting implications for dark matter physics and the history of our galaxy.

 
 

Nolan Smyth [website] [inspire]

Nolan is studying new possibilities for the thermal history of dark matter in the early universe, and how these novel scenarios might be connected to observables in the late universe. Our work together has the potential to probe the structure of dark sectors even with no non-gravitational coupling to the Standard Model.

 

Former students

Anikeya Aditya ‘18

  • Thesis: Inferring the mass function of primordial black holes from gravitational wave observations

  • Next step: PhD in Materials Science, USC.

Paul Andreini ‘19

  • Thesis: Time-evolution of the primordial black hole mass function

  • Next step: PhD in Physics, University of Oregon.

Mason Hargrave ‘19

  • Next step: PhD in Physical, Mathematical, and Computational Biology at The Rockefeller University.

Olivia Ross ‘20

  • Thesis: Searching for primordial black holes

  • Our work: 2012.05875, 2205.09756

  • Next step: PhD in Astronomy, Cornell University.

Thomas Schwemberger ‘18

  • Thesis: Constraints on Planck mass relics from primordial black hole evaporation with a generic initial mass function

  • Our work: 1906.06348

  • Next step: PhD in Physics, University of Oregon.

Ava Webber ‘22

Jackson Yant ‘18