Albany Blackburn

Climate Physics

My current research interests lie in the realm of climate physics. This subfield seeks to understand the underlying physics behind the Earth’s climate, such as the fluid mechanics principles governing precipitation or the heat transfer affecting how hot it is outside. Perhaps the most pressing topic this work focuses on is understanding how global warming will change the climate and affect our lives (e.g. through the increase in extreme weather events like fires and floods).

I am especially interested in learning more about atmospheric dynamics and radiation in particular, and how these forces will shape extreme weather in the future. I am just starting out on this journey, and I am excited to see where this path takes me!

Particle Pheno

Before climate physics, my research was in particle physics phenomenology. My work sought to uncover the nature of dark matter by connecting theoretical calculations to future experiments and searches.

Dark matter is a mysterious beast. We know it must exist (for example, from gravitational measurements), but we have yet to see it interacting with any “normal” matter (hence why we call it “dark”). Nevertheless, it remains one of the largest mysteries in modern physics, as dark matter makes up nearly 85% of all matter in the universe. In other words, we know next to nothing about 85% of all “stuff” in the universe!

Publications

Multi-track Displaced Vertices at B-Factories

Electroweak Axion Portal to Dark Matter

Recent Awards

Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor (2024)

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (2023)

Goldwater Scholar (2022)

ARCS Scholar (2022)