I am a theoretical physicist, and my work focuses on quantum mechanical systems of many particles that are strongly interacting, far from equilibrium, or both. 

Systems of many particles can display a variety of emergent cooperative phenomena that cannot be understood from their microscopic details. Usually, the study of this type of "condensed matter" builds on two key principles, namely (i) that most situations can be understood by approximately treating the constituents (such as electrons, atoms, or molecules) as weakly interacting; and (ii) that the assumption of thermal equilibrium provides a powerful way to capture the properties of complex systems using simple statistical tools.

I'm interested in what happens when quantum systems are so strongly interacting, or so dramatically disturbed from equilibrium, that these guiding principles break down. A new set of analytical and computational ideas is required to fully understand the behavior of such systems, and new experimental probes must be devised to explore their properties. Besides their great fundamental interest, many of the new phenomena displayed in these extreme regimes could have many important applications. Insights into weakly-correlated, equilibrium systems fueled the technological revolution of the second half of the twentieth century; what new and unexpected benefits might we accrue from understanding their more complex cousins?