Risa H. Wechsler is an American physicist and Professor of Physics at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

and of Particle Physics and Astrophysics at

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford Univers ...

. She is the director of the

Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology The Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) is an independent joint laboratory of Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, founded in 2003 by a gift by Fred Kavli and The Kavli Foundation. It is h ...

. She is an Elected Fellow of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

since 2017 and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 2020. A cited expert in cosmology, large-scale structure, and galaxy formation, her interests are astrophysics and dark matter and energy. She was the Co-Spokesperson of the

Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is a scientific research instrument for conducting spectrographic astronomical surveys of distant galaxies. Its main components are a focal plane containing 5,000 fiber-positioning robots, and a bank ...

Collaboration until mid-2018 and has played a leading role in the

Dark Energy Survey The Dark Energy Survey (DES) is an astronomical survey designed to constrain the properties of dark energy. It uses images taken in the near-ultraviolet, Visible spectrum, visible, and near-infrared to measure the expansion of the universe using ...

. She has appeared on the BBC show Horizon: The Mystery of Dark Energy, the Science Channel's Space's Deepest Secrets: Secret History of the Big Bang and on the PBS show Science Bytes: Dark Matters. In 2019, she collaborated on an exhibit with the artist Oxossi Ayofemi at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.

Education

She earned her S.B. in Physics from

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

in 1996 and her Ph.D from

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California syste ...

in 2001. She was a NASA Hubble Fellow at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

from 2003-2006.

Publications

A list of Wechsler'
publications can be found here

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wechsler, Risa H. Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Stanford University faculty Fellows of the American Physical Society 21st-century American physicists American cosmologists American women academics American women physicists Women astrophysicists MIT Department of Physics alumni University of California, Santa Cruz alumni 21st-century American women scientists