Susan N. Coppersmith

Short bio


Dr. Susan Coppersmith is a Vilas Research Professor and the Robert E. Fassnacht Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  She is a theoretical physicist who has worked on a broad range of problems in the area of complex systems, and has made substantial contributions to the understanding of subjects including glasses, granular materials, the nonlinear dynamics of magnetic flux lattices in type-II superconductors.  Her current research focuses on the development of quantum computers using silicon technology similar to that used in modern classical computers.

Dr. Coppersmith has served as Chair of the UW-Madison physics department, as a member of the NORDITA advisory board, as a member of the Mathematical and Physical Science Advisory Committee of the National Science Foundation, as a member of the Condensed Matter and Materials Research Committee of the National Research Council (U.S.), and as a Trustee at the Aspen Center for Physics.  She has served as Chair of the Division of Condensed Matter Physics and of the Topical Group for Statistical and Nonlinear Physics of the American Physical Society, as Chair of the Section on Physics of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Gordon Research Conferences, and as Chair of the External Advisory Board of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
 
Dr. Coppersmith is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences.