Dr. Anubhav Mathur

Anubhav Mathur’s career in physics began with aviation, when he took part in the Royal Canadian Air Cadets, Canada’s largest federally funded extracurricular youth program. There, he mentored students on aeronautical topics, discovering a deep interest in the underlying principles.  He eventually pursued a PhD in physics at Johns Hopkins University, where he was part of the High-Energy Theory Group. During a summer at CERN, the international nuclear physics lab in Geneva, Switzerland, he realized he wanted to leverage improvements in technology to discover new fundamental physical laws.

In his doctoral work, Dr. Mathur explored a feature of dark matter, compositeness, which is ubiquitous in physical systems from nuclei to galaxy clusters.

He holds two postdoctoral positions concurrently, at the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics at New York University, and at the Department of Particle Physics at Tel Aviv University. He is enthusiastic about studying in Israel because of its lively and active environment for particle phenomenology research, not just at Tel Aviv University but also at neighboring institutions such as Hebrew University and the Weizmann Institute. He expects to strengthen departmental collaboration between NYU and TAU by spending significant periods of time at both.

Particle physics appeals to Dr. Mathur because it aims to describe the composition, interactions, and history of the universe at a fundamental level. Evidence shows that the Standard Model (SM), the most successful unified description to date, still cannot explain a number of observed phenomena, most notably, the existence of dark matter. Dr. Mathur hopes to identify opportunities to observe the imprints of BSM physics (theories beyond the SM) in a range of physical systems. A confirmed extension to the SM would be a major scientific breakthrough with wide-ranging implications. His multi-pronged approach could contribute promising targets of study, develop novel techniques to probe them, and improve existing theories.