Katherine Freese

Katherine Freese, PhD

Dr. Katherine Freese is the George E. Uhlenbeck Professor of Physics at the University of Michigan. Starting in September 2014 she is Director of Nordita, the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics located in Stockholm. She works on a wide range of topics in theoretical cosmology and astroparticle physics. She has been working to identify the dark matter and dark energy that permeate the universe, as well as to build a successful model for the early universe immediately after the Big Bang. Recently, she has proposed dark stars as the first stars to form in the universe.

Dr. Freese received a BA in Physics at Princeton Univ., MA from Columbia Univ., and PhD from Univ. of Chicago. She held postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard Univ., Berkeley, and the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara. After an Assistant Professorship at MIT, Freese moved to Univ. of Michigan in 1991. Dr. Freese was awarded a Simons Foundation Fellowship in Theoretical Physics in 2012 and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. She has written a popular-level book, The Cosmic Cocktail: Three Parts Dark Matter, published in June 2014 by Princeton University Press. Her work has been described in the New York Times, Scientific American, New Scientist, National Public Radio, BBC, Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News, and other popular media.

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