New Faculty: Geoff Penington, Oliver Philcox, Tom Hartman, Ken Van Tilburg
Introducing Geoff Penington:
Joined the Department July, 2025
I am very excited to be returning to Stanford after previously being here as a PhD student from 2015-2020. I grew up in the south of England and was an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge, but then moved to California and quickly realised that I never wanted to leave. The UK is a wonderful place in many ways, but it doesn’t have Yosemite. After completing my PhD, I spent five years as an Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley (including two years as a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study) before now hopping across the bay back to where I started.
My research mostly involves the theory of quantum information, quantum gravity, or a combination of the two. In particular, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the quantum mechanics of black holes. In 2019, I was involved in some exciting progress on Hawking’s famous black hole information problem. More recently, I have written several papers that use the theory of von Neumann algebras to understand the structure of observables in quantum gravity. At a broader level, I am interested in anything that helps us to understand the fundamental rules describing our universe. What physical phenomena are possible in a quantum theory? How does that change when gravity is added to the mix? Where does the classical spacetime that we live in come from and how we go beyond it?
Outside of physics, I enjoy skiing, climbing, hiking and generally anything adventurous and outdoors. I also have a side hustle in AI research. Fortunately, Stanford is perfectly located for doing all of those things!
Introducing Oliver Philcox:
Joined the Department September, 2025
Hello! I’m Oliver, a new Assistant Professor in the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology(KIPAC) and the Leinweber Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stanford (LITP). I am delighted to be joining Stanford’s wonderful community of students, postdocs, faculty, administrators and beyond!
I grew up in the south of England and completed my undergraduate studies in the University of Cambridge. After receiving a Herchel-Smith scholarship, I spent a fun year performing research in Harvard’s Center for Astrophysics, before moving south to undertake a PhD in Princeton. During that time, I was a regular visitor to the Institute for Advanced Study (which has great lunch). I completed my postdoctoral studies in New York as a Junior Fellow of the Simons Society of Fellows, hosted at Columbia, though I spent a large fraction of time at the Flatiron Institute (which also has great lunch). I’m excited to move across the country and explore the science (and lunch) scene in the Bay Area!
Since I was young, I have been fascinated by the physical world and how it can be explained using mathematics. I am particularly tantalized by Big Questions such as: How did the Universe begin? What is its composition? How does it evolve? The key goal of my research program is to shed light on such questions by utilizing mathematical and computational tools to analyze and interpret huge astrophysical datasets.
Cosmology is undergoing a data revolution. Throughout this decade, huge surveys will map the three-dimensional positions of millions of galaxies in the Universe, mapping the cosmos across space and time. These maps encode a wealth of information about the early Universe; by modeling the cosmological evolution using theoretical and numerical techniques, we can “wind back the clock” to obtain glimpses of the Universe’s initial conditions. I am particularly interested in using these observations to understand the first fractions of a second (“inflation”), in particular probing particle physics at energy scales many orders of magnitudes above those accessible to terrestrial colliders. I have already demonstrated that such approaches are feasible for Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data — by developing similar techniques and applying them to galaxy catalogs, we can constrain key quantities such as the masses and spins of novel inflationary particles. This research involves a blend of many techniques, including pen-and-paper theory, statistics, high-performance computing, and beyond.
Stanford is the perfect place in which to pursue such a program. Both the Physics department and SLAC are playing a huge role in cosmological data acquisition and interpretation, for example through the Vera Rubin Observatory, which has recently begun taking data. Furthermore, this research is highly cross-disciplinary so benefits greatly from collaboration with theorists at LITP, analysts at KIPAC, experimentalists at SLAC, and beyond. Perhaps most importantly, Stanford attracts an incredible array of students and postdocs who make the cosmological magic happen!
Beyond cosmology, I am a keen (though novice) scuba diver, hiker, and traveler. I also love to travel through my stomach — in New York, I visited over 250 restaurants! I am excited to experience all that California has to offer!
Introducing Tom Hartman:
Joining the department in January, 2026
I will join Stanford in January, after eleven years on the faculty at Cornell. My research is on quantum gravity and quantum field theory. The broad goal is to explore the basic properties of matter and spacetime: How does spacetime emerge from quantum mechanics? How can we predict the behavior of strongly interacting quantum fields? How do we describe black holes and the very early universe near singularities, where ordinary space and time break down?
These questions are all connected. There is strong theoretical evidence that spacetime, as described by General Relativity, is only an approximate, low-energy description of the underlying quantum degrees of freedom. This is known as holographic duality. The mechanism is not fully understood, but we know that two of the crucial ingredients are quantum entanglement and strongly interacting quantum fields. This means that we can use quantum field theory and quantum information to study gravity, and vice versa.
In my research group, we use this idea in various ways. For example, we calculate what happens when matter falls into a black hole or scatters around it, and use the results to develop new analytical and computational techniques in quantum field theory. We have used this strategy to make new predictions for quantum matter and classical phase transitions that can be tested experimentally and numerically. We have also developed methods to analyze strongly interacting field theories using quantum information and the conformal bootstrap, and used them to see how the equations of General Relativity come from entanglement.
I am a quantum field theorist at heart, and I am most drawn to problems that connect QFT to other areas --- black holes, cosmology, quantum information, particle physics, condensed matter, and occasionally pure mathematics. At the moment, I am focused on understanding higher topologies in the gravitational path integral, QFTs with random interactions, and observables called light-ray correlators in strongly interacting field theories.
Outside of research, I look forward to exploring the Bay Area with my family, and hiking and camping in the Sierras and the other nearby mountains.
Introducing Ken Van Tilburg:
Joining the department in March, 2026
I’m excited to join the Physics Department this spring as a faculty member in theoretical particle physics. My research explores new ways to probe physics beyond the Standard Model, with a focus on dark matter and hidden sectors of the universe. Originally from Belgium, I studied physics and math at MIT and earned my PhD at Stanford. I've held postdoctoral positions at the Institute
for Advanced Study, NYU, and the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, returning to NYU as faculty and a research scientist at the Flatiron Institute. My work spans particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology, using precise instruments and cosmic phenomena to search for new physics. My group investigates topics like stellar basins, dark matter lensing through stellar motions, exotic axion-mediated forces, and ultra-high-resolution interferometry. A common thread is using subtle signals—from atomic clocks to quasars—to uncover deep physical laws. I enjoy teaching and mentoring across all levels, and I look forward to building a dynamic research group, collaborating widely, and contributing to the department’s teaching and discovery missions.