Dissertations Defended: August 2026

September 24, 2026

ASTRONOMY

Kai Yeung Chow
Black hole accretion flows: Jet boundary instabilities and baryon loading
Sponsor: Lorenzo Sironi

Ryan Golant
To B or Not to B: Genesis and implications of astrophysical magnetic fields
Sponsors: Greg Bryan and Lorenzo Sironi
 

BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

Yuhao Jin
Behavioral, neural, and computational mechanism of learnability
Sponsor: Jacqueline Gottlieb
 

CHEMICAL PHYSICS

Yu Hsuan Liang
Optimizing electronic structure theory in periodic systems
Sponsor: Timothy Berkelbach

Shu Fay Ung
Correlated electronic states in moiré heterostructures: Insights from quantum chemistry
Sponsor: David Reichman

Shenwei Wu
Phonon interactions and finite-temperature lattice dynamics in soft mode materials
Sponsor: Chris Marianetti
 

CHEMISTRY

William Zhang
Synthesis and surface modification of III-V and II-VI quantum dots to tune optical properties and performance
Sponsor: Jonathan Owen

Qiongfang Zhang
Engineering ribosomes to reveal the molecular mechanisms of translation and its quality control
Sponsor: Ruben Gonzalez
 

ECONOMICS

Thu Pham
Essays in econometrics and family economics
Sponsor: Simon Lee
 

PHILOSOPHY

Noah Betz-Richman
The semantics and pragmatics of stylistic variation
Sponsor: Karen Lewis
 

PHYSICS

Hanpu Jiang
Measurement of the inclusive jet cross section in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 200 GeV with the sPHENIX detector
Sponsor: William Zajc

Anqi Mu
Transport and dynamics in quantum many-body systems
Sponsor: Andrew Millis

John Staunton
Scales, symmetries, and flows: Aspects of effective field theory
Sponsor: Lam Hui
 

SOCIOLOGY

Amy Weissenbach
Routes to crisis: Narrating precarity in personal appeals
Sponsor: Peter Bearman