Physics and Astronomy Climate and Diversity Committee

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The Climate and Diversity Committee is committed to providing a welcoming climate within the School of Physics and Astronomy with special emphasis on inclusion, diversity and community building. Our mission is to support communication, and to prevent bullying, discrimination, and harassment. Our members are drawn from all the cohorts of the School, including undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, staff, and faculty. We work closely with other organized forums whose goals overlap with ours, such as SPS (Society of Physics Students), GradPhi, W+iPA (Women and Gender Minorities in Physics and Astronomy, and UW+iPA.

Professor Andrew Furmanski (He/Him - Committee Chair) -- I am a particle physicist. My research focuses on neutrinos, with a current emphasis on how neutrinos interact with nuclei. I work in large, diverse, international collaborations, spending many years designing, building, and operating, building-sized detectors that allow us to learn about the behavior of particles that really don't like to be seen.

I love talking about my research, and about how physics impacts our daily lives. Whoever you are, and wherever you're from, physics is universal and everyone is welcome in our community!

Contact: afurmans@umn.edu, PAN 346

Alicia Canfield (she/her) -- I have worked in the Fine Theoretical Physics Institute since 2017 and have been the Physics & Astronomy REU Coordinator since 2022.

I'm interested in improving the culture of the department through long term structural changes so everyone will feel welcome and will be able to see themselves belonging in the field and in academics in general.

Contact: canf0019@umn.edu, Tate 275-03

Professor Priscilla Cushman -- I have had lots of experience working in large collaborations in high energy physics. In the past, this included work at CERN, but then I got interested in direct detection of dark matter using cryogenic solid state techniques. The new SuperCDMS experiment is being built at SNOLAB, a deep underground laboratory in Canada and is composed of 20 institutions from the US, Canada, UK, and India. Large research groups can be both daunting and exciting. I can share my experience and give you some pointers. Whether you join a large or a small research group, you should be able to have a fulfilling research experience and trust that your contributions are valued.

Contact: cushman@umn.edu, PAN 327

Professor Lindsay Glesener (she/her) -- I am an astrophysicist who mainly studies the Sun. I collaborate on building new X-ray instruments as well as analyzing solar data from past and current spacecraft. Although I find this line of work very fulfilling, my academic path to get here wasn't a straight line. I had another career and tried other majors before I found physics as my calling. Not everyone knows what they want to do from the very beginning, and there are many paths by which you can accomplish your goals.

Contact: glesener@umn.edu, Tate Hall 262

Kate Hildebrandt (she/her) -- I am a third year graduate student working in experimental neutrino physics on the DUNE experiment. I have long been interested in improving diversity in physics, and I first started serving on this committee when I was an undergraduate student here at UMN.

Contact: hilde303@umn.edu

Professor Vuk Mandic -- I work in the fields of astrophysics and cosmology, focusing on searches for gravitational waves (LIGO, LISA) and dark matter (SuperCDMS). My work involves large collaborations, lots of data analysis, cool cryogenic particle detectors, and even some seismology. I also lead the NSF Research Training program named Data Science in Multi-Messenger Astrophysics - in addition to bringing together astrophysics and data science students and faculty, this program aims to broaden the participation in STEM fields and develop socio-emotional aspects of graduate student training.

Contact: vuk@umn.edu, PAN 328