Congratulations to Wright Lab Class of 2026 graduates!

Yale Physics graduates and friends posing.

(L-R) Iris Ponce, Ananya Rai, Mark Gonzalez, Kirsty Scott, Sierra Wilde.

Wright Lab congratulates our graduating students in the class of 2026, including: 

Ph.D. Graduates

December 2025

  • Ananya Rai (advisor Helen Caines), “Unveiling the Structure of the Perfect Superfluid using Correlation Functions”
  • Youqi Song (advisor Helen Caines), “Probing the parton shower and hadronization through jet substructure measurements at STAR”
  • Jiaxiang Wang (advisor David Moore), “Levitated Optomechanical Sensors for Fundamental Physics”
Two graduating Ph.D.s with their advisor posing in front of Beinecke library.

Wright Lab Ph.D. graduates Jiaxiang Wang (left) and Ben Siegel (right) with their advisor, David Moore (middle).

May 2026

  • Sierra Cantway (advisor Helen Caines), “Probing jet hadrochemistry modification with measurements of identified particles in jets and the underlying event in pp and Pb–Pb collisions with ALICE”
  • Chitres Guria (advisor Jack Harris), “Measuring the geometry and topology of non-Hermitian systems”
  • Benjamin Siegel (advisor David Moore), “Arrays of Optomechanically Levitated Microspheres”
  • Andrew Tamis (advisor Helen Caines), “Measurement of Energy Correlators Within Jets at STAR”

Undergraduates

Physics

  • Olivia Birney (advisor Laura Havener), “Building a photon isolation environment to test High Rate Picosecond Photodetectors (HRPPDs) for the Electron-Proton/Ion Collider (ePIC) experiment”. Second major History.
  • Maddi Brown (advisor Laura Havener)
  • Richard Lin (advisor Laura Havener), “Probing Color Reconnection and Underlying Event Dynamics using Energy Correlators”
  • Cleber Redondo (advisor Laura Havener), “Construction of Neutron and Gamma Shielding for HRPPD Irradiation Tests”
  • Langdan Zhu (advisor Helen Caines), “Light Yield Characterization of Scintillating Tiles Using SiPM Gain Calibration for the ePIC LFH Calorimeter”

Physics & Philosophy

  • Sam Friedman (advisor Helen Caines), “Geiger Counters and the Particle Problem: Pragmatic Limits of QFT Ontology”
  • Ingrid Rodríguez Vila (advisor Reina Maruyama), “Electron Detection Algorithm for the RAY Experiment”.
  • Jaden Uram (advisor Jack Harris), “Fabricating a Glass Microbubble Whispering Gallery Mode Resonator” 

Physics (Intensive)

  • Lilia Chatalbasheva (advisor Laura Havener), “Thermal Model of the Underlying Event Background in Heavy-Ion Collisions for Jet Analyses”. Second major Economics.
  • Edos Herwegh Vonk (advisor David Moore), “Optimising Feedback Cooling on an Optically Trapped Nanoparticle”. Second major Philosophy.
  • Ethan Martinez (advisor Sarah Demers), “Reconstructing Tau Leptons in a 10 TeV Muon Collider”
  • Nikita Mazotov (advisor Sarah Demers)
  • George Ploumis Mechanical Engineering (advisor Sarah Demers), “Exploring a lower muon threshold for Higgs→ττ triggers in a search for Charge-Parity Violation”. Second major Physics (Intensive).
  • Iffat Zarif (advisor Sarah Demers), “Development of a Photon Filter for the Mu2e Experiment”

We also congratulate the following former members of Wright Lab who are graduating in the class of 2026: graduate students Andy Ding and Joseph Lap; and undergraduates Emily Peng, Éle Donegan, and Quinn Ennis.