Risa Wechsler

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.

Wechsler is the Director of the joint SDS/KIPAC center, Decoding the Universe, which aims to unlock the physics of the universe by pioneering innovative approaches to extracting insights from vast, multi-modal datasets.