• Source: Risa Wechsler

      • Risa H. Wechsler is an American cosmological physicist, Professor of Physics at Stanford University, and Professor of Particle Physics and Astrophysics at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. She is the director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology.


      Education & Career


      Wechsler earned her S.B. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1996, and earned her Ph.D from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2001. She completed postdoctoral research at the University of Michigan Department of Physics from 2001 to 2003, and at the University of Chicago from 2003-2006, where she was a NASA Hubble Fellow in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, and an Enrico Fermi Fellow at the Enrico Fermi Institute. She joined the faculty of the Department of Physics at Stanford University in 2006.
      Wechsler has been a Trustee on the Board of the Aspen Center for Physics, and a board member of KICC and NOIRLab since 2020. She has served on the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academy of Sciences since 2021, and has been on the Operations Management Board of the Rubin Observatory since 2022.


      Research


      Wechsler’s cosmology research investigates dark energy, dark matter, galaxy formation, and the growth of structure in the universe. She has pursued many collaborative research projects in the course of which she has served as Co-Spokesperson for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Collaboration (2014-2018) and has worked on the Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Dark Energy Science Collaboration and the Dark Sky Simulations on the Titan Supercomputer. She founded the Satellites Around Galactic Areas (SAGA) Survey with Marla Geha, and helped initiate the Dark Energy Survey in 2004.


      Recognition


      Outstanding Leader Award, Stanford Faculty Women's Forum, 2023
      Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, elected 2023
      Distinguished Alumna, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2022
      Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, elected 2020
      Stanford Fellows, 2019-2023
      Fellow, American Physical Society, elected 2017
      Stanford Faculty Scholar, 2015-2016
      Nina C. Crocker Faculty Scholar in Humanities and Sciences, 2013-2017
      Hellman Faculty Scholar, Stanford, 2008
      Terman Fellow, Stanford, 2006-2012
      Hubble Fellow, 2003-2006


      Outreach


      Sharing her expertise with the general public, Wechsler has conveyed her passion for physics in a range of media. In 2016, she appeared on the BBC show Horizon: The Mystery of Dark Energy, and the Science Channel program called Space's Deepest Secrets: Secret History of the Big Bang. In 2012, she spoke on the PBS series Science Bytes: Dark Matters
      Wechsler also collaborated with the artist Oxossi Ayofemi on an art exhibit entitled Black Matter, exhibited from July 2018 to January 2020 at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. The show combined discussions about the elusive nature of the universe's dark matter with notions of presence and absence in African American culture.


      References

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