Mark Van Raamsdonk is a professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks among the top thre ...

since 2002. Before that, he was a postdoc at Stanford University from 2000 until 2002 and studied as a graduate student at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

from 1995 until 2000 when he received his PhD under the supervision of Washington Taylor. Before that, he did a combined mathematics/physics undergraduate degree at

where he graduated with what is believed to be the highest GPA in the University's prior history. In 2009 Mark Van Raamsdonk started to work on the relationship between quantum mechanics and gravity during his first

sabbatical year A sabbatical (from the Hebrew: (i.e., Sabbath); in Latin ; Greek: ) is a rest or break from work. The concept of the sabbatical is based on the Biblical practice of ''shmita'' (sabbatical year), which is related to agriculture. According to ...

. He published his results "Building up spacetime with quantum entanglement" as an essay in 2010, which won the first prize of the annual essay contest run by the

Gravity Research Foundation The Gravity Research Foundation is an organization established in 1948 by businessman Roger Babson (founder of Babson College) to find ways to implement gravitational shielding. Over time, the foundation turned away from trying to block gravity ...

. Van Raamsdonk is a member of the "It from Qubit" collaboration, which was formed in 2015. Mark Van Raamsdonk plays the

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of Single-reed instrument, single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed (mouthpi ...

and has organized a concert series at UBC, inspired by a similar one that existed during his time at Princeton.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Raamsdonk, Mark Van Theoretical physicists Year of birth missing (living people) Living people University of British Columbia faculty Princeton University alumni Simons Investigator