Postdoctoral Fellows of the Burke Institute

Map of institutions where fellows are now on faculty

The Burke Institute has several endowed fellowships for distinguished postdoctoral scholars in theoretical physics such as the Sherman Fairchild Prize Postdoctoral Fellowships, David and Ellen Lee Distinguished Fellowships, and McCone, DuBridge, and Tolman Fellowships. The support offered by these fellowships enables theorists to pursue innovative research.

Over 95 percent of the more than 120 former endowed fellows hold distinguished academic positions. These scholars work on every continent except Antarctica.

For postdoctoral fellowship applications, check here.

In February 2015, some former fellows gathered at Caltech for the Inaugural Celebration and Symposium of the Burke Institute.

Current Fellows of the Burke Institute

2023 - 2026

Eric Anschuetz

Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Physics

Leonardo Badurina

Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Physics

Kim Berghaus

Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Physics

Lei Gioia Yang

Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Physics

Aaron Hillman

Dubridge Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Physics

Xiaoshan Huang

Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Astrophysics

Thomas Schuster

Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Physics

Gal Shavit

Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Physics

2022 - 2025

Rocio Kiman

Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Astronomy

Jacob McNamara

Dubridge Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Physics

Sara Murciano

Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Physics

Sridip Pal

Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Physics

Javier Roulet

Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Physics

Pablo Sala de Torres-Solanot

Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Physics

Nathanan Tantivasadakarn

Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Physics

Daichi Tsuna

Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Astrophysics

Nils Vu

Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Astrophysics

2021-2024

Nathan Benjamin

Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Physics

Iryna Butsky

Dubridge Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Astrophysics

Andreas Elben

Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Physics

Yuya Kusuki

Brinson Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Physics

Abigail Polin (2020 - 2024)

Postdoctoral Scholar Fellowship Trainee in Theoretical Astrophysics

Yikun Wang

David and Ellen Lee Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Physics

Jordan Wilson-Gerow

Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Astrophysics

Leo Zhou

Dubridge Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Physics

2020-2023

Kyle Kremer

Einstein Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Astrophysics

Clara Murgui Galvez

Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Theoretical Physics

Past Postdoctoral Fellows

Sherman Fairchild Prize Fellowship

Last	First	Period	Current Position
Longaretti	Pierre	1987-1990	Permanent Researcher at Grenoble
Lerche	Wolfgang	1988-1991	Senior Staff Scientist at CERN
Ratra	Bharat	1989-1992	Professor at Kansas State University
Qian	Yong-Zhong	1990-1992	Professor at University of Minnesota
Tu	Yuhai	1990-1993	Permanent Research Staff at IBM
Ma	Chung-Pei	1993-1996	Professor at UC Berkeley
Last	Yoram	1994-1997	Professor at Hebrew University
Lifshitz	Ron	1995-1998	Associate Professor at Tel Aviv University
Brady	Patrick	1995-1998	Professor at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Rajagopal	Krishna	1996-1997	Professor at MIT
Li	Zhi-Yun	1996-1999	Professor at University of Virginia
Beacom	John	1997-2000	Professor at Ohio State University
Burke	Peter	1997-2000	Professor at UC Irvine
Eikenberry	Stephen	1997-2001	Professor at University of Florida
Lipan	Ovidiu	1998-2000	Associate Professor at the University of Richmond
Ryd	Anders	1996-2002	Associate Professor at Cornell
Chepelev	Iouri	2001-2004	Staff Scientist at the National Institutes of Health
Hayden	Patrick	2001-2004	Professor at Stanford
Milosavljevic	Milos	2002-2006	Associate Prof at University of Texas, Austin
Damanik	David	2003-2006	Professor at Rice University
Pfeiffer	Harald	2003-2006	Group Leader at Max-Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, Golm
Cirigliano	Vincenzo	2003-2006	Staff Scientist at Los Alamos National Lab
Vidal	Guifre	2003-2005	Faculty Member at Perimeter Institute
Bell	Nicole	2004-2006	Senior Lecturer at University of Melbourne
Klich	Israel	2004-2007	Associate Professor at University of Virginia
Shigemori	Masaki	2004-2007	Associate Prof at Kyoto University
Brink	Jeandrew	2005-2007	Lecturer at Stellenbosch University
Nagai	Daisuke	2005-2008	Associate Professor at Yale University
Ando	Shin'ichiro	2006-2009	Assistant Professor at University of Amsterdam
Barnett	Ryan	2006-2009	Lecturer at Imperial College, London
Lee	Keith	2006-2009	Postdoc at University of Pittsburgh
Peng	Fang	2006-2009	Juniper Networks
Saraykin	Kirill	2007-2010
Breuer	Jonathan	2007-2009	Senior Lecturer at Hebrew University
Brooks	Alyson	2008-2011	Assistant Professor at Rutgers University
Hinderer	Tanja	2008-2011	Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Maryland
Jordan	Stephen	2008-2011	Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research
Ott	Christian	2008-2009	Visiting Professor at Kyoto University
Jiang	Liang	2009- 2012	Associate Professor at Yale
Tsang	David	2009-2012	CTC Prize Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Maryland
Bergman	Doron	2009-2013	Walmart Labs
Kotera	Kumiko	2011-2012	Permanent CNRS Faculty at Id'A de Paris
Evenbly	Glen	2011-2014	Assistant Professor at University of Sherbrooke
Putrov	Pavel	2012-2015	Research Scientist at ICTP, Trieste
Mong	Roger	2012-2015	Assistant Professor at University of Pittsburgh
Yan	Wenbin	2012-2015	Assistant Professor at Tsinghua University
Radice	David	2013- 2016	Associate Research Scholar at Princeton University and Member at Institute for Advanced Study
Lysov	Vyacheslav	2014-2017	Postdoctoral Fellow at OIST
Song	Justin	2014-2016	Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University
Gosset	David	2014-2016	Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo
Jonathan	Gopalakrishnan	2015-2016	Assistant Professor at City University of New York
Squire	Jonathan	2015-2018	Prize Research Fellow at University of Otago, New Zealand
Storch	Natalia	2015-2018	Science Fiction Writer
Dedushenko	Mykola	2016-2019	Postdoc at the Simons Center in Stony Brook
Lin	Ying-Hsuan	2016-2020	Postdoc at Harvard
Jochym-O'Connor	Tomas	2016-2019	Staff Member at Watson Research Center, IBM
Haim	Arbel	2017-2020	Staff Member at Amazon
Lee	Eve	2017-2019	Assistant Professor at McGill University
Necib	Lina	2017-2020	Carnegie Observatories Fellow
Paquette	Natalie	2017-2020	Member at Institute of Advanced Study
Yang	Peng	2017-2020	Assistant Professor at California State University, Northridge
Bai	Yuntao	2018-2021	Anthropic (non academia)
Ji	Suoqing	2018-2021	Faculty at Shanghai Astronomical Observatory
Lucia	Angelo	2018-2021	Ramon y Caial Fellow, Spain
Meltzer	David	2018-2021	Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University
Slagle	Kevin	2018-current
Thompson	Alex	2018-current	Assistant Professor at UC Davis to begin in 2022
Caiazzo	Ilaria	2019-2022	Postdoctoral Scholar, TAPIR, Caltech
Kang	Monica	2019-2023	Postdoctoral Scholar, University of Pennsylvania
Nezami	Sepehr	2019-2022	Staff, Renaissance Technologies LLC
Yu	Hang	2019-2022	Assistant Professor, Montana State University
Zhang	Pingfei	2019-2022	Associate Professor - Fudan University, Shanghai
Deppe	Nils	2020-2023	Assistant Professor - Cornell University
Helset	Andreas	2020-2023	Postdoctoral Scholar - CERN
Klco	Natalie	2020-2022	Assistant Professor of Physics, Duke University
Moudgalya	Sanjay	2020-current
Murgui	Clara	2020-current
Parra-Martinez	Julio	2020-2023	Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia
Benjamin	Nathan	2021-current
Wilson-Gerow	Jordan	2021-current
Kiman	Rocio	2022-current
Murciano	Sara	2022-current
Pal	Sridip	2022-current
Roulet	Javier	2022-current
Sala de Torres-Solanot	Pablo	2022-current
Tantivasadakarn	Nathanan	2022-current
Tsuna	Daichi	2022-current
Vu	Nils	2022-current
Anschuetz	Eric	2023-
Badurina	Leonardo	2023-
Berghaus	Kim	2023-
Huang	Xiaoshan	2023-
Schuster	Thomas	2023-
Shavit	Gal	2023-
Yang	Lei Gioia	2023-

Tolman Fellowship

Last	First	Period	Current Position
Press	William	1972-1973	Professor at University of Texas at Austin
Teukolsky	Saul	1973-1974	Professor at Caltech and Cornell Univeristy
Tremaine	Scott	1975-1977	Professor at Institute for Advanced Study
Zurek	Wojciech	1979-1981	Laboratory Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory
Yaffe	Laurence	1980-1982	Professor at University of Washington
Grinstein	Benjamin	1984-1987	Professor at UC San Diego
Thompson	Christopher	1988-1991	Professor at University of Toronto
Lai	Dong	1994-1997	Professor at Cornell University
Davies	Melvyn	1992-1995	Professor at Lund University
Nielsen	Michael	1998-2003	Writer
Buonanno	Alessandra	1999-2001	Director of Max-Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics at Golm
Pretorius	Frans	2002-2005	Professor at Princeton
Leung	Debbie	2002-2004	Professor at University of Waterloo

McCone Fellowship

Last	First	Period	Current Position
Trivedi	Sandip	1992-1994	Director of Tata Institute
Mehen	Thomas	1997-2000	Professor at Duke University
Cheung	Yeuk-Kwan Edna	2000-2002	Professor at Nanjing University
Su	Shufang	2000-2003	Professor at University of Arizona
Frey	Andrew	2003-2006	Associate Professor at University of Winnipeg
Schafer-Nameki	Sakura	2006-2009	Professor, Oxford University
Marsano	Joseph	2006-2009	Postdoc at University of Chicago
Keller	Christopher	2009-2012	Assistant Professor at University of Arizona
Leichenauer	Stefan	2011-2014	Postdoc at UC Berkeley
Gadde	Abhijit	2011-2014	Professor at Tata Institute for Fundamental Research
An	Haipeng	2014-2017	Assistant Professor at Tsinghua University
Solon	Mikhail	2017-2020	Assistant Professor at UCLA

DuBridge Fellowship

Last	First	Period	Current Position
Bildsten	Lars	1991-1994	Director of KITP; professor at UC Santa Barbara
Fuchs	Christopher	1996-1999	Professor at University of Massachusetts, Boston
Shaviv	Nir Joseph	1996-1999	Professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Heyl	Jeremy	1997-2000	Professor at University of British Columbia
Buchalter	Ari	1999-2001	MediaMath
MacFadyen	Andrew	2001-2004	Associate Professor at New York University
Squires	Todd	2002-2004	Associate Professor at University of British Columbia
Furlanetto	Steven	2003-2006	Professor at UCLA
Childs	Andrew	2004-2007	Professor at University of Maryland
Mantry	Gautam	2005-2008	Associate Professor, University of North Georgia
Fiete	Gregory	2006-2008	Associate Professor at University of Texas, Austin
Alicea	Jason	2007-2010	William K. Davis Professor at Caltech
Buckley	Matthew	2008-2010	Associate Professor at Rutgers
Zwiebel	Benjamin	2009-2012	McKay Brothers
Pekker	David	2010-2013	Assistant Professor at University of Pittsburgh
Gorshkov	Alexey	2010-2013	Staff Scientist at NIST at Maryland
Roberts	Luke	2012-2013	Assistant Professor at NSCL, Michigan State University
Fuller	Jim	2013-2017	Professor at Caltech
Clausen	Drew	2013-2016	Data Scientist at Kaiser Permanente Health Innovation Team
Bao	Ning	2014-2017	Postdoc at UC Berkeley
Mishmash	Ryan	2014-2017	Postdoc at Perimeter Institute
Saraswat	Prashant	2016-2019
Wheeler	Coral	2016-2019	NSF Hubble Fellow at Carnegie Observatories
Albert	Victor	2017-2020	Staff Scientist at NIST at Maryland
Knapp	Christina	2019-2020	Associate Researcher, Microsoft Station Q, UCSB
Butsky	Iryna	2021-current
McNamara	Jacob	2022-current

David and Ellen Lee Fellowship

Last	First	Period	Current Position
Hackl	Andreas	2010-2011	Consultant at SAP
Yoshida	Beni	2012-2015	Faculty Member at Perimeter Institute
Trnka	Jaroslav	2013-2016	Assistant Professor, UC Davis
Fluder	Martin	2015-2018	Postdoc at Princeton
Lu	Wenbin	2018-2021	Spitzer Fellow at Princeton, followed by Assistant Professor, UC Berkeley
Wang	Yikun	2021-current

Bantrell Fellowship

Last	First	Period	Current Position
Mlodinow	Leonard	1980-1983	Writer
Applegate	James	1981-1984	Professor at Columbia University
Solomon	Sorin	1982-1985	Professor at Hebrew University
Hogan	Craig	1982-1985	Professor at University of Chicago
Goodman	Jeremy	1983-1986	Professor at Princeton University
Hawley	John	1984-1987	Professor at University of Virginia

NAPF Fellowship

Last	First	Period	Current Position
Narayan	Ramesh	1983-1985	Professor at Harvard
Madau	Piero	1987-1989	Professor at UC Santa Cruz
Murray	Norman	1989-1991	Professor at University of Toronto

Weingart Fellowship

Last	First	Period	Current Position
Warner	Nicholas	1982-1985	Professor at University of Southern California
Impey	Chris	1983-1986	University Distinguished Professor at University of Arizona
Milton	Graeme	1984-1986	Professor at University of Utah
Zirnbauer	Martin	1984-1987	Professor at University of Cologne
Karma	Alain	1985-1988	Professor at Northeastern University
Rohm	Ryan	1985-1988	Adjunct Professor at University of North Carolina
Gilbert	Gerald	1986-1988	Principal Scientist at MITRE

Research Assistant Professors

Last	First	Period	Current Position
Horava	Petr	1997-2000	Professor at UC Berkeley
Yang	Kun	1997-1999	Professor at Florida State University
Cooray	Asantha	2001-2005	Professor at UC Irvine
Gomis	Jaume	2002-2004	Faculty Member at Perimeter Institute
Mikhailov	Andrei	2003-2009	Professor at University Estadual Paulista, Brazil
Sari	Re’em	1998-2003	Professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Nakar	Ehud	2004-2009	Professor at Tel Aviv University
Bromberg	Kenneth	2001-2004	Professor at University of Utah
Bauer	Christian	2003-2006	Senior Staff Scientist at LBNL
Baranovsky	Vladimir	2004-2006	Assistant Professor at UC Irvine
Ghigginni	Paolo	2007-2008	CNRS Researcher at University Nantes
Lee	Seung-Yeop	2009-2013	Assistant Professor at University of South Florida
Nakayama	Yu	2010-2015	Associate Professor at Rikkyo University
Alberts	Thomas	2011-2014	Associate Professor at University of Utah