Biography
Nathaniel Craig leads the particle theory group at the University of California, Santa Barbara, supported by the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation (via the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics).
Particle physics seeks to understand the elementary constituents of matter, the forces that bind them, and the organizing principles that unite them. Recent decades have seen tremendous progress towards these goals, culminating in the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the completion of the Standard Model. The broad objective of his research is to reveal the fundamental physics underlying the Standard Model by pioneering new approaches to some of the biggest open questions: the origin of mass, the unification of forces, the nature of dark matter and dark energy, and the patterns of Standard Model parameters, among many others. Prof. Craig has pursued this program using tools from across the spectrum of theoretical physics, from formal methods of quantum field theory to cosmology and collider phenomenology. His research has leveraged the Higgs boson as a tool for new discoveries, motivated the next generation of colliders, and transformed the landscape of physics beyond the Standard Model by discovering new theories that explain the breaking of electroweak symmetry.
Particle theory in the 21st century makes contact with a host of other fields, including condensed matter physics; atomic, molecular, and optical physics; nuclear physics; astrophysics; cosmology; mathematics; and computer science. In recent years, his group's research has expanded to include the mathematical field of optimal transport, machine learning for physics, and physics for machine learning.
From 2020-2022, Nathaniel Craig was a co-convener of the Theory Frontier in the APS DPF Snowmass process, the decadal survey of particle physics; our work resulted in an official recommendation to increase DOE particle theory funding by 30%. He currently leads the Particle Theory Initiative at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, where he works to strengthen connections both between the different facets of particle physics and with the many other fields that particle physics intersects.
Find more at https://web.physics.ucsb.edu/~ncraig/.