Origin Stories: Mark Trodden (Video)

Here we highlight the journeys of members of our faculty as they followed their paths from impressionable young students to world-class scholars.

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

By Alex Schein

Welcome to Origin Stories, a new feature of Omnia where we highlight the journeys of members of our faculty as they followed their paths from impressionable young students to world-class scholars working at the cutting edge of their fields.

Our series begins, fittingly, with the Big Bang.



Photos and audio by Alex Schein

Mark Trodden’s research lies at the border of particle physics and cosmology. Using clues contained in cosmological data, his work addresses the fundamental physics underlying such phenomena as the nature of dark matter and dark energy and the physics of the early universe. He has focused in recent years on mapping out viable models of the accelerating universe, and he has proposed one of the most-studied approaches to the idea that a modification of general relativity may explain cosmic acceleration.

Trodden, who came to Penn in 2009, is the Fay R. and Eugene L. Langberg Professor of Physics, chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and co-director of the Penn Center for Particle Cosmology.

For more on Mark Trodden and the Penn Center for Particle Cosmology visit http://www.physics.upenn.edu/particlecosmo/.