Sakura Schafer-Nameki is a German

mathematical physicist Mathematical physics is the development of mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' defines the field as "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and the development of ...

working in

string theory In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and intera ...

and

supersymmetric gauge theory In theoretical physics, there are many theories with supersymmetry (SUSY) which also have internal gauge symmetries. Supersymmetric gauge theory generalizes this notion. Gauge theory A gauge theory is a field theory with gauge symmetry. Rough ...

. She works at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

as a Professor of Mathematical Physics in the Mathematical Institute and as a senior research fellow of

Wadham College, Oxford Wadham College ( ) is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is located in the centre of Oxford, at the intersection of Broad Street, Oxford, Broad Street and Parks Road ...

Early life and education

Although partly of Japanese descent, Schafer-Nameki is originally from

Swabia Swabia ; , colloquially ''Schwabenland'' or ''Ländle''; archaic English also Suabia or Svebia is a cultural, historic and linguistic region in southwestern Germany. The name is ultimately derived from the medieval Duchy of Swabia, one of ...

in Germany. She studied both physics and mathematics at the

University of Stuttgart The University of Stuttgart () is a research university located in Stuttgart, Germany. It was founded in 1829 and is organized into 10 faculties. It is one of the oldest technical universities in Germany with programs in civil, mechanical, ind ...

from 1995 to 1998. After coming to the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

for the

Mathematical Tripos The Mathematical Tripos is the mathematics course that is taught in the Faculty of Mathematics, University of Cambridge, Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Origin In its classical nineteenth-century form, the tripos was a di ...

, which she passed with distinction in 1999, she remained at Cambridge for doctoral studies. She completed her

Ph.D A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

. in 2003; her dissertation, ''D-Branes in Boundary Field Theory'', was supervised by Peter Goddard.

Career

After completing her doctorate, Schafer-Nameki became a postdoctoral researcher at the

University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (, also referred to as UHH) is a public university, public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('':de:Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen, ...

, a Postdoctoral Prize Fellow at the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...

, and a senior postdoctoral fellow at the

Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) is a research institute of the University of California, Santa Barbara dedicated to theoretical physics. KITP is one of 20 Kavli Foundation (United_States)#The Kavli Institutes, Kavli Institutes ...

. She took a position as a lecturer at

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...

in 2010, and was promoted to reader in 2014. In 2016 she moved to Oxford as Professor of Mathematical Physics and Tutorial Fellow of Wadham College, becoming a senior research fellow at the college in 2020. Her research combines

and geometry. She was the principal investigator for the five-year

European Research Council The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientific ...

project "Higgs bundles: Supersymmetric Gauge Theories and Geometry" which began in 2016. In 2020 she joined the Simons Collaboration on Special Holonomy in Geometry, Analysis, and Physics as one of its Principal Investigators.

References

External links

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Schafer-Nameki, Sakura Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 20th-century German mathematicians 21st-century German physicists German women mathematicians German women physicists German mathematical physicists German people of Japanese descent University of Stuttgart alumni Academics of King's College London Fellows of Wadham College, Oxford 20th-century German women scientists