Graduate students

Current PhD students…

  • Pushkar Mohile (Stony Brook University)
  • Ziqi Zhou (Stony Brook University)
  • Boli Zhou (University of Texas at Austin)

Former PhD students (with their doctoral theses and current institutions)…

  • Michael S. Dimitriyev
    • PhD thesis (pdf): Function Through Form in Soft Matter: The Influence of Bounded Geometries in Heated Gels and Fluctuating Proteins
    • Georgia Institute of Technology PhD completed in Summer 2017
    • Continued as a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Physics at Georgia Tech and then became a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
    • Now a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University
  • Benjamin Loewe
    • PhD thesis (pdf): Bridges Between Quantum and Classical Mechanics: Directed Polymers, Flocking and Transitionless Quantum Driving
    • Georgia Institute of Technology PhD completed in 2017
    • Left to become a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physics at Syracuse University / Department of Physics at the University of California — Santa Barbara and then a postdoctoral research associate in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh
    • Now a professor in the Institute of Physics at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
  • D. Zeb Rocklin
    • PhD thesis (pdf): Directed-Polymer Systems Explored Via Their Quantum Analogs
    • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign PhD completed in Summer 2013
    • Left to become a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physics at the University of Michigan and then Kavli Institute at Cornell / Bethe Postdoctoral Fellow in the Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics at Cornell University
    • Now a professor in School of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Bing Sui Lu
    • PhD thesis (pdf): Statistical Physics of Isotropic-Genesis Nematic Elastomers
    • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign PhD completed in Summer 2012
    • Left to become a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Natural Sciences at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China and then a postdoctoral fellow in Biophysics and Condensed Matter Physics at the Institut Jozef Stefan, Ljubljana, Slovenia
    • Now a lecturer in the Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology, Thammasat University, Thailand
  • Sarang Gopalakrishnan
    • PhD thesis (pdf): Photon-Mediated Emergent Phenomena in Optical Cavities
    • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign PhD completed in Summer 2012
    • Left to become Harvard Quantum Optics Center Prize Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Physics at Harvard University and then Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar in Theoretical Physics at the Caltech
    • Now a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Princeton University
  • David G. Ferguson
    • PhD thesis (pdf): Explorations of Domain Walls and Half Quantum Vortices in Unconventional Superconductors
    • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign PhD completed in Summer 2011
    • Left to become a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Northwestern University
    • Now Senior Staff Physicist at Northrop Grumman Corporation
  • Florin Bora
    • PhD thesis (pdf): Quantized Vortices in Arbitrary Dimensions and the Normal-to-Superfluid Phase Transition
    • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign PhD completed in January 2010
    • Left to join Bloomberg L.P., New York, NY
  • Xiaoming Mao
    • PhD thesis (pdf): Statistical Physics of Soft Random Solids: Vulcanization, Heterogeneity, and Elasticity
    • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign PhD completed in August 2008
    • Left to become a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Physics at the University of Pennsylvania
    • Now a professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Michigan
  • David Pekker
    • PhD thesis (pdf): Topological Excitations and Dissipation in Superconductors and Superfluids Having Multiply Connected Geometries
    • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign PhD completed in July 2007
    • Left to become a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Physics at Harvard University and then Lee A. DuBridge Postdoctoral Fellow at Caltech
    • Now a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh and Director of Theory at Creyon Bio, Inc
  • Swagatam Mukhopadhyay
    • PhD thesis (pdf): Critical Properties of the Emergent Random Solid at the Vulcanization/Gelation Transition
    • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign PhD completed in July 2005
    • Left to become a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Physics at the University of California-Santa Barbara and then a postdoctoral researcher at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
    • Now Co-founder and Chief Scientific Office at Creyon Bio, Inc
  • Tzu-Chieh Wei
    • PhD thesis (pdf): Quantum Entanglement: Geometric Quantification and Applications to Multi-Partite States and Quantum Phase Transitions
    • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign PhD completed in September 2004
    • Continued as a postdoctoral research in the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and then left to become a postdoctoral researcher in the Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo, Canada and then the University of British Columbia, Canada
    • Now a professor in the C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook University
  • Inanc Adagideli
    • PhD thesis (pdf): Semiclassical Approaches to Quantal Andreev Billiards and Other Topics in Inhomogeneous Superconductivity
    • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign PhD completed in September 2001
    • Left to become a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Physics at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands
    • Now a professor in the Faculty of Science and Technology — Nano-Electronic Materials, University of Twente, Netherlands and Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey
  • Daniel E. Sheehy
    • PhD thesis (pdf): Topics in High-Temperature Superconductivity
    • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign PhD completed in July 2001
    • Left to become a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Physics at the University of British Columbia, Canada
    • Now a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Louisiana State University
  • Weiqun Peng
    • PhD thesis (pdf): The Vulcanization Transition — A Statistical Mechanical Perspective
    • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign PhD completed in May 2001
    • Left to become a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Physics at the University of California San Diego
    • Now a professor in the Department of Physics at The George Washington University, Washington, DC
  • Konstantin A. Shakhnovich
    • PhD thesis (pdf): The Statistical Mechanics of Continuous Random Networks
    • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign PhD completed in April 2001
    • Former Global Head of Trading, Citadel Asset Management; former Partner and Global Head of Systematic Market-Making, Goldman Sachs
  • Horacio E. Castillo
    • PhD thesis (pdf): Statistical Mechanics of the Amorphous Solid State of Randomly Crosslinked Macromolecules
    • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign PhD completed in Summer 1998
    • Left to become a postdoctoral research associate at L’Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, France
    • Now a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Ohio University, Athens, Ohio
  • Martin Zapotocky
    • PhD thesis: Role of Topological Defects and Textures in the Kinetics of Phase Ordering (pdf in parts: pp. 0-39, pp. 40-84, pp. 85-104, pp. 105-147, pp. 148-172)
    • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign PhD completed in August 1996
    • Left to become a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Physics at the University of Pennsylvania
    • Now a permanent member of the Institute of Physiology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Prague
  • Martin B. Tarlie
    • PhD thesis: Nonequilibrium Properties of Mesoscopic Superconducting Rings (pdf in parts: pp. 0-42, pp. 43-96, pp. 97-142); thesis abstract)
    • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign PhD completed in August 1995
    • Left to become a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Physics at the University of Chicago
    • Now with GMO Investment Management, Boston, MA
  • Peter D. Olmsted
    • PhD thesis (pdf): The Effect of Shear Flow on the Isotropic–Nematic Transition in Liquid Crystals
    • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign PhD completed in August 1991
    • Left to become a postdoctoral researcher at Exxon Research in New Jersey
    • Now Joseph Semmes Ives Chair in Physics at Georgetown University