Professor Jesse Thaler has been named director of the MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science (LNS), effective Aug. 1. He succeeds Professor Bolek Wyslouch, who directed LNS for the past decade. Thaler is a theoretical particle physicist who combines techniques from quantum field theory and machine learning to address outstanding questions in fundamental physics. 

“In his research, Jesse has done pioneering work on particle jets at the Large Hadron Collider and is a leader in combining AI and machine learning with fundamental particle physics,” says Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the MIT School of Science and the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics. “The collaborative nature of his research programs will serve the Laboratory for Nuclear Science as science enters a new era of AI-driven discovery.”

Thaler is the William and Emma Rogers Professor of Physics in the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics — a Leinweber Institute (CTP-LI). Since 2020, he has served as inaugural director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions, or IAIFI, which was recently renewed for another five years. Mike Williams, professor of physics, will succeed Thaler as IAIFI director. LNS is also poised to pursue new research projects through the Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission, which has a focus on AI-enabled scientific discovery.

“In my own field of particle physics, researchers are developing cutting-edge AI algorithms to handle the data deluge from collider experiments and to perform heroic theoretical calculations. This work has direct implications for discovering new physics, but the algorithms themselves turn out to be valuable well beyond our field,” says Thaler.

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