Risa Wechsler, Ph.D.

Risa Wechsler is the Humanities and Sciences Professor at Stanford University and Director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), and a faculty member in the Department of Physics at Stanford and the department of Particle Physics & Astrophysics at SLAC. She is a leading cosmologist whose work addresses some of the most profound questions about our universe — how it formed, what it is made of, how it is structured, and what its future holds. Dr. Wechsler’s research focuses on understanding the evolution of galaxies, the large-scale structure of the universe, and the nature of dark matter and dark energy, using sophisticated simulations and state-of-the-art observational data to explore these enigmatic forces that shape the cosmos.

Her work has been instrumental in major international collaborations such as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which aims to unravel the mysteries of dark energy by mapping the positions of millions of galaxies, and the Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), an ambitious decade-long survey that will reveal the changing night sky in unprecedented detail. Recent work also explores the formation and cosmological context of the Milky Way, and probes of dark matter with small-scale cosmic structure. Dr. Wechsler’s work combines detailed models of the universe with the new 3D maps created by these surveys to understand the hidden forces that govern its expansion and evolution and to understand our place in it.

Dr. Wechsler is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

She has served on advisory committees for the National Academy of Sciences, the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, and several major foundations, and currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the Aspen Center for Physics and the LSST Discovery Alliance. She is passionate about broadening access to physics and astronomy and engaging the public with scientific discovery, and has written about and discussed science in numerous public venues, including TED, Teen Vogue, PBS, and the BBC.