Tracy Slatyer

Tracy R. Slatyer is a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), whose research lies at the intersection of theoretical particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. We have strong evidence that roughly 5/6 of the matter in the universe is not composed of any known particles, but the fundamental nature of this “dark matter” remains unknown. Prof. Slatyer has explored how astrophysical and cosmological data could shed light on the properties of dark matter, with research ranging from developing new ideas for dark matter to analyzing telescope data, and she co-discovered the giant gamma-ray structures known as the “Fermi Bubbles” erupting from the center of the Milky Way. Prof. Slatyer is a Simons Investigator in Astrophysics and has received a number of awards for her research, including a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, a New Horizons Prize from the Breakthrough Foundation, and the Rossi Prize of the American Astronomical Society. She completed her undergraduate degree in theoretical physics at the Australian National University in 2005, received a PhD in physics from Harvard in 2010, and held a postdoctoral appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, before joining the MIT faculty in 2013.