People

	Jen Sierchio President Jen is a second-year focusing on plasma physics and magnetic confinement fusion, working with Jim Terry and Earl Marmar on Alcator C-Mod to study turbulence in tokamak plasmas. In her spare time, she enjoys making jewelry, baking, and kayaking and sailing in the Charles.
	Yichen Shen Vice-President and GSC Deparment Rep Born in Hangzhou, China, Yichen is currently a second-year, studying a new type of optical material – photonics crystals, and their applications in solar cells. Yichen is currently a board member of MIT Graduate Student Council, and vice president of MIT ballroom dancing club. Yichen likes playing soccer and tennis, chatting with friends, and traveling around.
	Cody Burton Treasurer Cody is a first year graduate student interested in ultracold gases, who is currently working in Wolfgang Ketterle’s research group. Outside of physics, Cody is a Nationally Registered Emergency Medical Technician.
	Colin Kennedy Secretary Colin is a second year graduate student working with Rubidium Bose-Einstein Condensates in Wolfgang Ketterle’s group. He is interested in the experimental realization of non-trivial quantum many-body states of bosons in optical lattices. Outside of physics he likes to play many sports, and enjoys outdoor activities like hiking and running. Colin is also working on sampling all of New England’s finest beers as well as producing his own (although not nearly as tasty) varieties.
	Christina Ignarra 2011-2012 President Christina Ignarra is a 4th year graduate student in LNS working in neutrino physics with Janet Conrad. Specifically, she works on the MiniBooNE and MicroBooNE neutrino oscillation experiments located at Fermilab. Though technically based here at MIT, she now spends most of her time at the airport. She enjoys trying to convince people (experimentally of course) that liquid argon ice cream is better than liquid nitrogen ice cream.
	Javier Sanchez-Yamagishi 2010-2011 President Javier is a 5th year student in Condensed Matter experiments working in the Jarillo-Herrero Group. He does research on quantum transport in graphene. He enjoys rocking out.
	Axel Schmidt Former Treasurer Axel is currently in his 4th year (started 2009), in the Experimental Nuclear and Particle division. Along with his advisor, Richard Milner, he works on an experiment called OLYMPUS, at the German laboratory DESY, in Hamburg. In OLYMPUS, they use accelerated beams of electrons and positrons, directed at a fixed target of protons to learn more about the proton’s internal structure. Outside of the lab, he loves playing soccer; he represent MIT on the graduate club team.
	Greg Dooley Sports Greg is in the astrophysics division working for Professor Anna Frebel, studying galaxy formation and cosmological dark matter properties through massive simulations of the universe from early conditions to the present day. He grew up in Poughkeepsie NY, went to undergrad at Princeton, and loves playing all types of sports. (That’s why he’s happy to serve as the sports representative.) Since coming to MIT he’s gotten into all ice related sports.
	Dorian Gangloff GSC Deparment Rep Dorian is a third-year in AMO and Quantum Information, working in Vladan Vuletic’s group. Fact: it’s Canadian French, not French Canadian.
	Rotem Gura Biophysics Rep Rotem received his B.Sc. in Physics from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and served in the Israeli army for five years. In his research, Rotem aims to develop physical models for protein-protein interactions in live cells. Good models will help in predicting the strength and character of interaction among a set of given proteins. Such predictions will have wide applications in areas of biological research such as protein aggregation and neurodegenerative diseases, cancer and drug-design. Key words: protein folding, molecular chaperones, statistical mechanics.
	John Hardin LNS Co-Rep John Hardin is from St. Louis, Missouri and attended undergrad at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is currently a first year graduate student working in Hadronic Physics with Mike Williams in LNS. Outside of physics, he enjoys reading and walking.
	Alex Leder LNS Co-Rep Alex hails from the deep south, even though he was born across the pond in Germany, specifically Baton Rouge, Louisiana where he did his undergrad at the Louisiana State University, and where he performed work in nanotechnology/experimental particle physics. Outside of the classroom his hobbies include model railroading (go see the tech model railroad at MIT if you ever get a chance), photography and enjoying a good cup of tea with friends on cold rainy day.
	Rebecca Levinson Astro Rep Rebecca is a 5th year grad in the astrophysics division studying weak gravitational lensing– the distortion of apparent galaxy shapes due to foreground masses. Long term her research will help constrain cosmological models. Short term, she likes curve fitting noisy data sets. Her advisor is Paul Schechter, also in astrophysics, Magellan enthusiast. She observes at Magellan about 2x per year. Her cats Bandit and Thief miss her when she’s gone. AMA?
	Xueying Lu Plasma Rep Xueying is a first-year student in plasma physics focusing on accelerators in Dr. Richard Temkin’s group.
	Lina Necib CTP Rep Lina is from Tunisia, but to undergrad at Boston University, majoring in Physics and Math. This is her first year at MIT, working on phenomenology in the Center for Theoretical Physics, (research adviser not so clear yet). Interesting fact: she was run over by a donkey when she was 12.
	Murphy Yuezhen Niu CMT Rep Murphy is a first-year graduate student from Xi’an China who created her English name out of strong interest in Physics. She is now enjoying taking courses, participating rehearsals of MIT DanceTroupe, writing her novels and drawing randomly at free times.
	Jenny Schloss AMO Co-Rep Jenny Schloss is a first year working in experimental atomic physics in Professor Zwierlein’s group. When not doing science, she enjoys good stories and spending time outdoors.
	Mukund Varma Colloquium Rep Mukund is a first-year student in the Experimental Nuclear and Particle Physics division. He enjoys playing all kinds of sports, reading science fiction and picking up and discarding new hobbies on a weekly basis.
	Tailin Wu CMX Co-Rep Tailin is a first-year graduate student interested in Atomic Physics. He loves playing chess and badminton.
	Eugene Yurtsev GSC Deparment Rep Eugene received his BS in Physics from the college of creative studies in UC Santa Barbara. Now, Eugene is working on cooperation and cheating in the evolution of antibiotic resistance in Jeff Gore’s lab. During his free time, Eugene plays the guitar and drinks tea… well, mostly he just drinks tea.
	Hao Zhang AMO Co-Rep Hao Zhang is a fourth year student in atomic and optical physics. He works in Vladan Vuletic’s group studying the entanglement of collective atomic spin state. Outside of physics he enjoys swimming, running and playing tennis.