Charles D. Brown II
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Charles D. Brown II is an American physicist and assistant professor at Yale University,[1] studying many-body physics of ultracold atoms in optical lattices and quantum simulation of quantum materials. Brown is also a lead organiser of #BlackInPhysics week, a campaign to recognise and amplify the scientific contributions of Black physicists.[2][3]
Brown studied physics at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, receiving a Bachelor of Science in 2013.[4] During his undergraduate studies, he carried out a 10-week research placement at the University of Chicago supported by the National Science Foundation.[5]
He obtained a PhD in physics from Yale University in 2019, working in the group of Jack Harris on quantum fluid dynamics.[6][7] His thesis investigated the optomechanical properties of superfluid liquid helium drops,[8][9] specifically studying the interaction between optical modes and surface vibrations of magnetically levitated superfluid drops.[10][11]
Brown received the Leigh Page Prize (2013) and the D. Allan Bromley Fellowship for Graduate Research in Physics (2017) from Yale.[12] He was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in 2014 and a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship in 2018.[13][14][12]
During his graduate studies, Brown was a student representative on the Board of the National Society of Black Physicists.[15] He also co-founded the Yale League of Black Scientists.[16]
Research career
Postdoctoral research
From 2019 to 2022, Brown was a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Dan Stamper-Kurn at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied ultracold atoms trapped in two-dimensional optical lattices.[17][18] His research focused on many-body physics phenomena of atoms in optical lattices with kagome geometries.[19][20] During this time he received a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (2020) and the Quantum Creators Prize from the University of Chicago's Chicago Quantum Exchange (2021).[12][21]
Yale faculty
Brown joined the Department of Physics at Yale University as an assistant professor in January 2023.[1][12] His research group uses ultracold atoms trapped in optical lattice potentials to perform quantum simulation experiments, exploring how geometry and topology affect emergent properties in exotic quantum materials.[22] The group is constructing experiments to study the physics of quasicrystals using ultracold atoms in optical quasicrystal lattice potentials.[23] Brown is a member of the Yale Quantum Institute and of Yale's Wright Laboratory.[22]