Exploring the physics of the interstellar medium and astrophysical magnetic fields at Stanford University.
PI: Susan E. Clark
Our group is working on a diverse set of problems involving Galactic and extragalactic magnetism, 3D ISM structure, interstellar turbulence, star formation, and polarized cosmological foregrounds, among other topics.
Our research is funded in part by grants from the NSF and NASA, and by an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship.
Browse a few recent publications from our group below, or check out our recent news.
Led by George Halal
Lei, Clark, Morel, Allys, Butsky, Redshaw, Fielding 2025
Karpovich, Clark, & Lopez-Rodriguez 2026
Lei & Clark 2023
Lopez-Rodriguez et al. 2023
Surgent, Lopez-Rodriguez, & Clark 2023
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Lei & Clark 2024
Borlaff, Lopez-Rodriguez et al. 2023
Nowotka, Clark et al. 2025
Martin-Alvarez et al. 2024
Dacunha, Martin-Alvarez, Clark, & Lopez-Rodriguez 2025
Cordova Rosado, Hensley, Clark et al. 2023
Halal, Clark, & Tahani 2024
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I am an Assistant Professor of Physics at Stanford. I am an astrophysicist, with primary research interests in cosmic magnetic fields, magnetohydrodynamic processes, and the interstellar medium. My group and I tackle these complex systems with a combination of observation, simulation, and analytic theory.
Prior to joining the faculty at Stanford, I was a NASA Hubble Fellow and postdoctoral member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. I received my Ph.D. in 2017 from Columbia University, where I was an NSF Graduate Fellow, and I attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a Morehead-Cain scholarship. I am originally from Annandale, Virginia.
Astrophysical magnetism is a data-intensive, multi-wavelength field. I collaborate on a number of ambitious astrophysics and cosmology experiments, including the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, Simons Observatory, CMB-S4, CCAT-Prime, LiteBIRD, the Galactic Australian SKA Pathfinder (GASKAP), the Global Magneto-Ionic Medium Survey (GMIMS), the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST), and Via. I co-founded the Pan-Experiment Galactic Science Group, which brings together scientists from a number of collaborations to facilitate Milky Way science with CMB experiment data. I am the co-director of the Center for Decoding the Universe @ Stanford, a new center within Stanford Data Science that aims to build interdisciplinary collaborations that leverage complex data to infer how the universe works.
Photo credit: Christopher Michel
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Postdoc & Research Scientist alumni Ari Cukierman, KIPAC Fellow, 2021-2022. → Postdoc at Caltech. [Our papers] Enrique Lopez Rodriguez, KIPAC Research Scientist, 2021-2024. → Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina. [Our papers] Mehrnoosh Tahani, KIPAC and Banting Fellow, 2022-2025. → Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina. [Our papers] Jaeyeon Kim, Kavli Fellow, 2023-2026. → Assistant Professor at Kyung Hee University. [Our papers] Graduate student alumni George Halal, Stanford Physics PhD '24. → Member of the Technical Staff, Contextual AI. [Our papers] Graduate rotation student alumni All rotation students are Stanford Physics PhD students unless otherwise noted. Natascha Barac, winter 2026 Alice Zhang, winter 2026 Katie Brown, fall 2025 Ben Sherwin, fall 2025 Caleb Redshaw, Mechanical Engineering, spring 2024. [Our papers] Annie Cheng, spring 2024 Jay Baptista, winter 2024 Shenghua (Sean) Liu, fall 2023 Tara Dacunha, spring 2023. [Our papers] Viraj Manwadkar, winter 2023 Jack Dinsmore, winter 2023 Charles Yang, fall 2022 Undergraduate alumni Caio Gould, Stanford '26 Emily Kim, Stanford, Summer 2024 Amber Yellow Horse, Stanford, Summer 2024 Jerry Yuan, Stanford, Summer 2024 Ziqian (Violet) Zhou, Stanford, Summer 2024 Carlos Rodriguez, Stanford, Summer 2024 Will Surgent, Stanford '24. → NSF Graduate Fellow, UC Santa Barbara Physics. [Our papers] Laywood Fayne, Stanford '24. → Master's student, Stanford Computer Science Khwaish Billore, Stanford '25 Francesca Fernandes, Stanford '25 Patrick Tupoumalohi, Summer 2023 Anthony Nuñez, Stanford '26. [Our papers] Gisselle Jimenez, Cal-Bridge Summer 2023 Yujina Basnet, Stanford '26 Monica Hicks, Stanford '25. → Master's student, Stanford Computer Science. [Our papers] Gabriel Muñoz Zarazua, Cal-Bridge Summer 2022 Israel Reyes, Summer 2022. → Undergraduate, UC Berkeley Abraar Saleem, Cal-Bridge Summer 2022. → KIPAC post-baccalaurate fellow, Stanford Eliza Gallagher, Stanford '25 Kendall Zylstra, Stanford '24. → Grad student, Stanford Geophysics Sally Jiang, Leadership Alliance 2021. → PhD student, Columbia Astronomy
Physics & Astrophysics Building Room 234 452 Lomita Mall, Stanford, CA 94305