SPS Faculty Dinners! – MIT Society of Physics Students

Hello SPS!

The Society of Physics Students is holding Student-Faculty dinners again!

Professor Anna Frebel: Sep 29 (Mon) @ 6:00 pm (Desi Dhaba)
Professor Shu-Heng Shao: Oct 16 (Thu) @ 6:00 pm (Mulan)
Professor Lina Necib: Oct 21 (Tue) @ 5:30 pm (Area 4)
Professor Philip Harris: (November), TBD
Professor Julien Tailleur: (late November/early December), TBD

Please sign up with this form!

Here’s a bit more info about the professors:

Professor Frebel’s research interests broadly cover observational stellar astrophysics. She is best known for her discoveries and spectroscopic analyses of the oldest, most metal-poor stars in the Milky Way and small dwarf galaxies (“stellar and dwarf galaxy archaeology”) to explore the chemical and physical conditions of the early universe.
Professor Shao explores the structural aspects of quantum field theories and lattice systems. Recently, his research has centered on generalized symmetries and anomalies, with a particular focus on a novel type of symmetry without an inverse, referred to as non-invertible symmetries. These new symmetries have been identified in various quantum systems, including the Ising model, Yang-Mills theories, lattice gauge theories, and the Standard Model. They lead to new constraints on renormalization group flows, new conservation laws, and new organizing principles in classifying phases of quantum matter.
Professor Necib is an astroparticle physicist, interested in understanding the origin of Dark Matter. She uses a combination of simulations and observational data to correlate the dynamics of Dark Matter with that of the stars in the Milky Way, and infer properties of Dark Matter. She has investigated the local dynamic structures in the Solar neighborhood using the Gaia, and contributed to building a catalog of local accreted stars using machine learning techniques. She has also discovered a new stream called Nyx after the Greek Goddess of the Night, and is using spectroscopy to identify its properties. Professor Necib is interested in using Gaia in conjunction with other spectroscopic surveys to understand the Dark Matter profile in the local solar neighborhood, the center of the Galaxy, and in dwarf galaxies. With a background in particle physics, Professor Necib relates the empirical results of Dark Matter to current direct and indirect detection experiments.
Professor Harris seeks to discover dark matter and understand the fundamental properties of the Higgs boson. He searches for dark matter in many different forms, from small experiments using a proton beam dump to CMS detector on the Large Hadron Collider. He has performed some of the most precise measurements of the electroweak force in his work. His work complements more conventional dark matter satellite and direct detection experiments providing a new angle. Philip has extended this work towards measurements of the Higgs boson properties and even more exotic signatures, which rely on Artificial Intelligence(AI). His work has heralded a new strategy of Higgs boson measurements that relies on AI to bring a deeper understanding of Higgs interactions.
Professor Julien Tailleur focuses on the emerging properties of active materials, which encompass systems made of large assemblies of units able to exert propelling forces on their environment. From molecular motors to cells and animal groups, active systems are found at all scales in nature. Over the past two decades, chemists and physicists have been able to engineer synthetic active systems by motorizing microscopic inert particles, hence paving the way towards new classes of smart materials.

We will email you if you won the lottery for any event. Dinner attendees should meet in the PCR (8-329) 30 minutes beforehand to walk to the restaurant together.

Please note that signing up for these faculty dinners is a commitment to attend if chosen by the lottery. If you do not notify us of a conflict 24 hours prior to the dinner, you will not be chosen for any subsequent dinners this term.

Sign up fast to secure your spot! Did I mention you get free food sponsored by SPS? Hope to see everyone at the faculty dinners!