Hello, my name is Rahul Sahay! I am a third year graduate student in Harvard Physics Department. Before then, I completed my undergraduate degree in physics and pure mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Research

My scientific interests intersect the fields of condensed matter physics, high energy physics, and quantum information science. The recent dialogue between these fields and also experiments on ``synthetic'' quantum materials has proven to be quite fruitful for furthering our understanding of fundamental physics and appears to be vital for developing practical quantum technologies (e.g. quantum computers and sensors). To this end, in my research, I regularly employ a variety of theoretical and numerical tools while maintaining regular contact with experiment to advance basic science and aid device applications. A detailed description of my research activities can be found here and my arXiv pre-prints can be found here.

My undergraduate research was made possible through funding by the Berkeley Physics Undergraduate Research Scholarship (BPURS), the Berkeley Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF), and the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship.

During graduate school, my research will be generously supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and Krell Institute's Computational Science Graduate Fellowship.

Community Involvement and Service

Within UC Berkeley's Physics department, I am currently the President of the Society of Physics Students for the Fall 2020 - Spring 2021 academic year. I have also previously held the position of Vice President and the position of Outreach Coordinator. During my time at SPS, I have worked on the several projects which can be found by clicking here.

• Founded the Undergraduate Seminar Series in Physics which gave a formally organized platform for upperclassmen (and sometimes lower classmen) to share their research in physics each week.


• Co-led the construction of the Official Wiki of the Berkeley Physics Department which has allowed underclassmen easier access to the departments resources.


• Helped in creating the Physics Department Official Piazza Page: a public forumn in the department. This public forumn broadly helps communication amongst the undergraduate community, the faculy, and the administration of the Physics Department.


• Organized and hosted a plethora of external outreach events aimed at helping kids from a wide array of backgrounds find their way into the sciences.

In addition to SPS, I have also done other outreach/service activities. I have taught two courses for Splash at Berkeley on Quantum Information (Spring 2019) and the Symmetry Breaking Theory of Phase Transitions (Fall 2019). At the end of Summer 2019, I also taught at Sigma Camp: an advanced math and science camp for kids. There, I taught Probability Theory and gave a guest lecture on Phase Transitions and the Higgs Boson. Lastly, I am an avid guitar player and have played music for the elderly through Cal Community Music for the last two years.

Contact
Rahul Sahay
Department of Physics
Harvard University
02138 Cambridge, MA, USA

E-mail
rsahay (at) g (dot) harvard (dot) edu