Adam F Falk1064

Educational and Research Background:
President, Williams College, Mass, 2010
Dean of Science and Arts, Johns Hopkins,
Professor, Johns Hopkins, 2000-
Associate Professor, Johns Hopkins, 1997-2000
Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins, 1994-97
Assistant Project Scientist, University of California, San Diego, 1993-94
Research Associate, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, 1991-93
Ph.D., Harvard University, 1991
B.S., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1987

Research Interests:
I am a member of the High Energy Theory Group in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. High energy physics (or particle physics) is the investigation of those laws of physics which are the most fundamental, in the sense that they govern nature at the shortest distance scales which we can probe. While I work on a variety of issues in elementary particle physics and quantum field theory, my primary research interest is in the interactions and decays of heavy quarks and their bound states.

The next decade will be an exciting time for experimental heavy quark physics, with the recent commissioning of three new "B Factories". These experiments, (a) the BaBar detector at SLAC, (b) the CLEO detector at Cornell, and (c) the Belle detector at KEK (Japan), eventually will produce mesons containing bottom quarks by the tens of millions, allowing study of their properties in unprecedented detail. It is hoped that among the results of these experiments will be new insight into the origin of the masses of the elementary particles, and information about the phenomenon of CP violation, which has profound implications for the generation of baryons (protons and neutrons) during the Big Bang. With the promise of so much new data in the near future, this is a wonderful time to study the theory of these particles.

Click here for a list of some of my recent papers (or here for all of them), including links to abstracts and the manuscripts themselves. However, note that much of this work is fairly technical, concerned with ways to treat the strong QCD dynamics which often muddies the interpretation of experimental results. For an introduction to the world of particle physics aimed at the non-specialist, check out The Particle Adventure, from the Contemporary Physics Education Project. See also the Fermilab home page for a very nice discussion of The Science of Particle Physics

Teaching:
This academic year, I am teaching Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, a course for physics majors in the junior year.

Graduate Students, Past and Present:
Adam Lewandowski

George Chiladze, Ph.D. 2000, QCD Phenomenology from Effective Field Theories

Tom Mehen, Ph.D. 1997, Phenomenology of Heavy Quarks and Quarkonium

Alexander Kyatkin, Ph.D. 1996, Nonperturbative and Instanton Phenomena in Particle Physics

Fellowships and Awards:
Johns Hopkins Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award, 1999

National Young Investigator (National Science Foundation)
Outstanding Junior Investigator (U.S. Department of Energy)
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow
Cottrell Scholar (Research Corporation)