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Department of Physics and Astronomy

Research Overview

The Department of Physics and Astronomy conducts groundbreaking research in a variety of areas in contemporary physics. Research expenditures exceed $6 million annually. Below is a list of topics and cross-cutting themes investigated by our faculty and students. Click on a research area to see a list of  faculty working in that area, and click on a faculty member’s name to go to their website and learn more about their research focus.

 

  • Holley-Bockelmann
  • Gurrola, Johns and Sheldon: Dark matter; early universe cosmology
  • Jani
  • Kephart: Particle theory; gravity: black holes, wormholes, cosmology; quantum entanglement; mathematical physics
  • Lupsasca
  • Runnoe: Quasar physics; AGN variability; supermassive black hole binaries; time-domain sky surveys; data science
  • Scherrer: Cosmology, dark energy, dark matter, physics of the early universe
  • Stassun: Stellar astrophysics, star formation, exoplanets, data science, space mission development, neurodiversity
  • Taylor: Gravitational waves; black holes; relativity; data science; astro-informatics; pulsar timing arrays
  • Weintraub
  • Eley: Design and preclinical testing of experimental particle radiation treatments for brain cancer; toxicity of particle radiation in brain; medical physics + neuroscience
  • Gore: Magnetic resonance; MRI and MRS; imaging science; biomedical imaging; neuroscience; tissue biophysics; quantitative physiology; image analysis
  • Hutson: Laser-tissue interactions; mechanobiology in morphogenesis and wound healing; advanced light microscopy; microfluidics for toxicology
  • Smith: Imaging science; machine learning and artificial intelligence for signal processing and image reconstruction; medical and astrophysical radiation environments; astrobiology; life on other planets; manned space travel
  • Wikswo: Systems biology; cardiac biophysics; microphysiological systems/organs-on-chips; microfluidics for cellular instrumentation, control, and automated model inference
  • Yock: Image-guided and adaptive radiation therapy; stereotactic radiosurgery; uncertainty management and radiotherapy plan robustness
  • Haglund: Metal-insulator transitions in quantum materials; photon-materials interactions at ultrafast time and nanometer length scales; dimensional effects in photoluminescence
  • Hutson: Systems biology of wound healing; mechanobiology of cellular assemblies 
  • Pantelides: Emergent electronic, magnetic, optical, and thermal properties in 2D materials, heterostructures, and superlattices
  • Greene, Kunnawalkam Elayavalli, Paquet, and Velkovska: Emergent phenomena such as the near-perfect fluid behavior of quark-gluon plasmas
  • Wikswo: Cardiac reentry and fibrillation; metabolic oscillations
  • Greene, Kunnawalkam Elayavalli, Paquet, and Velkovska: Bayesian inference, emulation & dimensionality reduction applied to high-energy nuclear physics; machine learning for tuning event generators, trigger selections, and tagging jets based on quark-flavor content
  • Gurrola, Johns and Sheldon: High-energy experimental and theoretical particle physics; particle identification with machine learning
  • Runnoe: Quasar physics; AGN variability; supermassive black hole binaries; time-domain sky surveys; data science
  • Smith: Imaging science; machine learning and artificial intelligence for signal processing and image reconstruction
  • Stassun: Stellar astrophysics, star formation, exoplanets, data science, space mission development, neurodiversity
  • Taylor: Gravitational waves; black holes; relativity; data science; astro-informatics; pulsar timing arrays
  • Wikswo: Robot scientists and self-driving biological laboratories for automated inference of biological signaling and metabolic networks
  • Ernst: New computational tools to analyze neutrino oscillations; potential existence and oscillation parameters of a sterile fourth neutrino.
  • Greene, Velkovska: Experimental and phenomenological studies in high-energy nuclear physics; emergent phenomena in quark-gluon plasma; characterization of quark-gluon plasma properties with machine learning applications; high-energy particle detector development
  • Kunnawalkam Elayavalli: Fundamental perturbative and non-pertubative QCD; space-time evolution of quarks and gluons in colliders
  • Paquet: High-energy nuclear physics; strongly-coupled quark-gluon plasma; relativistic fluid dynamics; Bayesian inference and machine learning
  • Umar: Low-energy nuclear reactions using time-dependent density functional theory
  • Csorna
  • Gurrola, Johns and Sheldon: High-energy experimental and theoretical particle physics; collider phenomenology; particle detector R&D; particle identification with machine learning; Higgs boson precision measurements; data analysis for new physics, e.g., dark matter, axions, extra dimensions, grand unified theories, gravitons, heavy neutrinos
  • Kephart: Particle theory; gravity: black holes, wormholes, cosmology; quantum entanglement; mathematical physics
  • Haglund: Single-photon emitters, topological photonics
  • Pantelides: Emergent electronic, magnetic, optical, and thermal properties in 2D materials, heterostructures, and superlattices
  • Tolk
  • Varga

Additionally, faculty from the department play a leadership role in several interdisciplinary centers and institutions, including:

Vanderbilt Dyer Observatory

The Department of Physics and Astronomy actively collaborates with the Vanderbilt Dyer Observatory. Together, we partner with organizations such as NASA and STScI to connect Dyer’s outreach efforts with the space research programs they sponsor. Vanderbilt astronomers regularly speak about their work through Dyer Observatory events.

Publications

Vanderbilt’s Institutional Repository maintains an archive of working papers from the Department of Physics and Astronomy. You may specifically view many of our physics, astrophysics, and astronomy publications.

 

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