The immune system is composed of a large number of heterogenous interacting components that collectively recognize and clear pathogens. To cover the high-dimensional molecular space of all possible threats, including those that have never been seen before, the adaptive immune system is endowed with a wide variety of receptor proteins, which are…

The National Academy has recently called for the US to adopt a strategy to produce fusion electricity from a compact pilot plant by mid-century. This approach requires innovations in technology (e.g. magnet systems and power handling systems) and innovations in physics. I will introduce the key issues that challenge the current program and…

We are now experiencing a revolution in optical technologies, where one can print and control massive optical circuits, on a microelectronic chip. This revolution is enabling a whole range of applications that are in need for scalable optical technologies and it is opening the door to areas that only a decade ago were…

Building a quantum computer in the highly manufacturable material silicon offers many advantages. Phosphorus atom qubits in silicon in particular have demonstrated extremely long (up to 35 s) coherence times with >99.9% fidelity. Their small size, combined with the magnetically quiet environment of isotopically pure silicon, make them…

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) array operating at the shortest possible wavelengths, which can resolve the event horizons of the nearest supermassive black holes. Observing at mm radio wavelengths enables detection of photons that originate from deep within the gravitational potential well of the…

Moiré patterns are ubiquitous in layered van der Waals materials and can now be fabricated with considerable control by combining mechanical exfoliation of van der Waals layers with tear and stack device fabrication techniques.  I will explain why the electronic and optical properties of two-dimensional semiconductors and semimetals are…

Using our state-of-the-art code Fornax we have simulated the collapse and explosion of the cores of many massive-star models in three spatial dimensions. This is the most comprehensive set of realistic 3D core-collapse supernova simulations yet performed and has provided very important insights into the mechanism and character of this 50-year…

Conformal Field Theory (CFT) is a framework used to describe physical systems with no intrinsic length or energy scales.  CFTs have wide applicability across theoretical physics, ranging from critical points in the phase diagrams of water or magnetic materials to the low-energy dynamics of extended objects in string theory.  In this talk, I…

Crystalline biominerals cost energy but provide the diverse organism making them with scaffolding, shielding, locomotion, mastication, gravity and magnetic field sensing, etc. How these crystals are formed reveals how living organisms harness the laws of physics and chemistry for their evolutionary advantage, but also because it can teach us…

Massive black holes weighing from a few tens of thousands to tens of billions of solar masses inhabit the centers of today’s galaxies, including our own Milky Way. Massive black holes also shone as quasars in the past, with the earliest detected a mere billion years after the Big Bang. Along cosmic time, encounters between galaxies hosting…

Time-reversal symmetry is one of fundamental symmetries that can present in many quantum mechanical systems. It plays an important role in many-body quantum systems, as demonstrated, for example, in the physics of topological insulators. In this talk, I will discuss topology and quantum entanglement protected and detected by time-reversal…

Not long after the birth of quantum mechanics nearly a century ago, Erwin Schroedinger pointed out, in his famous "Cat" paper, the difficulty which arises if we assume that the theory gives a complete account of the world up to and including our observations of it. This difficulty, known as the measurement, or better realization, problem, has…

What are the problems we can solve using a computer? is one of the very fundamental question in science. We will describe how do we use statistical physics to address this question. We will discuss what insights does physics bring to the field of algorithmic hardness and how is this insight used to develop better algorithms. We will describe…