Jesse Thaler is an American

particle physicist Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and fundamental interaction, forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the scale of protons and ...

who is a professor at the MIT Department of Physics. He was named director of the

NSF NSF may stand for: Political organizations *National Socialist Front, a Swedish National Socialist party *NS-Frauenschaft, the women's wing of the former German Nazi party * National Students Federation, a leftist Pakistani students' political g ...

Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI) upon its creation in August 2020.

Education and research

Thaler grew up in

York, Maine York is a town in York County, Maine, United States, near the southern tip of the state. The population in the 2020 United States census, 2020 census was 13,723. Situated beside the Atlantic Ocean on the Gulf of Maine, York is a well-known summe ...

, and attended high school at

Phillips Exeter Academy Phillips Exeter Academy (often called Exeter or PEA) is an Independent school, independent, co-educational, college-preparatory school in Exeter, New Hampshire. Established in 1781, it is America's sixth-oldest boarding school and educates an es ...

, where he won the Cox Medal, an award for the top five in the graduating class. From 1998 to 2002, he pursued a physics major ''magna cum laude'' from Brown University, where he was a member of

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States. It was founded in 1776 at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, ...

and a funk band. In 2006, Thaler earned a Ph.D. in physics from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

under the supervision of

Nima Arkani-Hamed Nima Arkani-Hamed (; born April 5, 1972) is an Iranian-American-Canadian

. He went to

Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California *George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer to ...

as a Miller Fellow before returning to New England to become a faculty member at the

MIT Center for Theoretical Physics The MIT Center for Theoretical Physics (CTP) is the hub of theoretical nuclear physics, particle physics, and quantum information research at MIT. It is a subdivision of MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science and Department of Physics. Research CTP ...

in 2010. He earned tenure in 2017 and was promoted to full professor in 2021. Since 2020 Thaler is inaugural Director of one of the inaugural NSF AI research institutes, the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions, along with Deputy Director Mike Williams. IAIFI received $20 million in initial funding. Thaler focuses on fusing "techniques from QFT and

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

to address outstanding questions in fundamental physics." He has made major contributions towards understanding the substructure of jets, the large collections of particles that are produced when two high-energy particles collide with one another in an experiment like the

LHC The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008, in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists, and ...

. Thaler applies machine learning techniques to understand and interpret the large quantities of data experimentalists collect about these cascades of particles, which in turn can both further physicists' knowledge about the

Standard Model of particle physics The Standard Model of particle physics is the theory describing three of the four known fundamental forces (electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions – excluding gravity) in the universe and classifying all known elementary particles. It ...

and has the potential to shed light on new physics. In addition to his collider physics work, Thaler also helped design a

dark matter In astronomy, dark matter is an invisible and hypothetical form of matter that does not interact with light or other electromagnetic radiation. Dark matter is implied by gravity, gravitational effects that cannot be explained by general relat ...

experiment, ABRACADABRA, that looks for

axion An axion () is a hypothetical elementary particle originally theorized in 1978 independently by Frank Wilczek and Steven Weinberg as the Goldstone boson of Peccei–Quinn theory, which had been proposed in 1977 to solve the strong CP problem ...

s and is currently in operation.

Teaching and Mentoring

Thaler has won multiple awards from MIT for his mentorship of students, including the Buechner Faculty Award for Undergraduate Advising (2013), the Buechner Faculty Award for Teaching (2014), and the Perkins Award for Excellence in Graduate Advising (2017), as well as the Certificate of Distinction for Excellence in Teaching from Harvard (2005). Many of his graduate students and postdocs have gone onto careers in academia, including as professors at MIT,

UIUC The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United States. Established in 1867, it is the f ...

, and the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

. His former undergraduate research advisees include three

Marshall Scholars The Marshall Scholarship is a postgraduate scholarship for "intellectually distinguished young Americans ndtheir country's future leaders" to study at any university in the United Kingdom. It is considered among the most prestigious scholarsh ...

. Along with colleague Mike Williams, Thaler also created and co-chairs a new interdisciplinary PhD program in physics, statistics, and data science since 2020.

Filmography

Thaler appeared in the movie ''

Particle Fever ''Particle Fever'' is a 2013 American documentary film tracking the first round of experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland. The film follows the Experimental physics, experimental physicists at the European Organiz ...

''.

Awards

Fellow of the American Physical Society The American Physical Society honors members with the designation ''Fellow'' for having made significant accomplishments to the field of physics. The following lists are divided chronologically by the year of designation. * List of fellows of the ...

(2022) *

Fermilab Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located in Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy United States Department of Energy National Labs, national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle phys ...

Distinguished Scholar (2020) *

Simons Simons is a surname. Notable people A * Alan Simons (born 1968), Welsh goalkeeper * Alexandra Simons de Ridder (born 1963), German equestrian * Algie Martin Simons (1870–1950), American socialist journalist, newspaper editor and political ac ...

Fellow in Theoretical Physics (2018) * Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award, MIT (2017) *

Sloan Research Fellowship The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. ...

(2013) *

Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers The Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) is the highest honor bestowed by the United States federal government on outstanding scientists and engineers in the early stages of their independent research careers. T ...

(2012) * DOE Early Career Award (2011) * Miller Fellowship, Berkeley (2006) * Goldhaber Prize, Harvard (2005) * National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2002) *

(2001)

References

External links

IAIFI
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thaler, Jesse Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty Brown University alumni Harvard University alumni Year of birth missing (living people) Scientists from Maine People from York, Maine American artificial intelligence researchers American particle physicists MIT Center for Theoretical Physics faculty Phillips Exeter Academy alumni Living people Fellows of the American Physical Society Recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers