Lars Bildsten
Photo credit: Mia Nie
We celebrated 30 years in Kohn Hall this summer. Prolonged leadership created this unique infrastructure that enables the hallmark of our mission: forming collaborations! Initiated and achieved by then Director Jim Langer, this architectural gem of the UC Santa Barbara campus was designed by Michael Graves. The banner image is a rendering from the original design, which Graves also continued when we expanded the building 20 years ago under the direction of then Director David Gross. Our celebration brought together campus leadership, members of UCSB’s physics department and the remaining KITP Founders to reminisce about what’s been achieved!
This year, six KITP Postdocs advanced to new positions in industry and academia. Evan Anders is a member of the technical staff at Anthropic. Wenping Cui is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton, Ying Zhao is a postdoctoral researcher at MIT, and Shang Liu is a Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate at Caltech and will then join the faculty at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Urban Seifert is a Research Group Leader at the University of Cologne in Germany, and Izabella Lovas will be an Advanced Fellow at ETH Zurich in Switzerland.
The newly arrived postdocs span most of physics. Fatih Dinç is coming from Stanford to work in biophysics. In High Energy Physics, Alexandre Homrich and Amalia Madden come from Perimeter Institute, while Bruno Scheihing comes from MIT. In condensed matter physics, the new arrivals are Thomas Kiely from Cornell and Wen Wang from Stanford. Chris Ni comes from U. Toronto to pursue astrophysics. All are already actively engaging in KITP’s intellectual life.
Ever since I started to spend time at the site of the Munger Physics Residence, I had an appreciation for its natural beauty. Indeed, on first visits there to monitor the “noise”, the loudest ones came from the birds in the wetland. Pages 2 and 3 are an excellent summary written by Demi Cain (KITP’s Development Coordinator) of why this site is so unique: its adjacency to well-curated wetlands. We did all we could in our design to ensure that our visitors would appreciate this location.
KITP visitors at all career-stages benefit from their time with us, and it’s even better when we can tell their stories. Page 4 is the story of Mukund Thattai, an early graduate fellow in 2003 and program coordinator in 2010. This story tells his scientific trajectory in biology and physics that led to his award of the 2023 Infosys Prize. Following on page 5 is the scientific story of a breakthrough in planet formation theory that occurred here in 2004 for KITP visitor Andrew Youdin. Yes, these stories appear “old,” but in reality, basic scientific research takes time to yield and have impact. Thankfully KITP is a lasting institution that can create these collaborations, nurture them and witness their later appreciation by the scientific community.
A few years ago, we established the KITP Fellows program (supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation) aimed at supporting the science and mentoring of faculty at teaching intensive minority-serving institutions. KITP Fellow Kausik Das has continued his engagement with KITP, returning to participate in our Teachers’ Conference earlier this year. The article on page 6 describes the scientific connections he made while here and the lasting value they are providing to his undergraduate mentoring.
The final article is about the science achieved by KITP Postdoc Fridtjof Brauns in collaboration with Professor Cristina Marchetti of UCSB’s physics department. We encourage our postdocs to explore new arenas of research and this scientific exploration sheds light on how patterns form in materials, as well as nature. I was happy to include some photos of murmurations (a naturally occurring phenomena they discussed) during a visit to UCSB’s Sedgwick Reserve.
I close with a note of sadness. In early September, we learned that Professor Doug Eardley had passed. Doug was an early KITP Permanent Member with a specialty in general relativity and its astrophysical applications. In addition to his many pieces of high-impact science, Doug also innovated at the institute with the envisioning, creation and operation of what became KITP Online. Started in 1997, this is the video archive of all talks at KITP--an international resource of over 23,000 talks that are watched every day for over 500 hours. Over the last few years, the curation of this effort transitioned to KITP staff member Alina Gutierrez, but Doug remained engaged and available for technical input on all things IT.
Thanks to all of you for your support and engagement here at KITP!
~ Lars Bildsten, KITP Director