Tim M.P. Tait

Biography

Tim M.P. Tait, Ph.D., is Chancellor's Professor of Physics & Astronomy at UC Irvine, where he served as Chair of the Department of Physics & Astronomy from 2019 to 2023. A theoretical particle physicist, Tait's research focuses on dark matter and physics beyond the Standard Model, with particular emphasis on connecting theoretical predictions to experimental searches at colliders and through cosmological observations. He has been instrumental in developing simplified models and effective field theory approaches for dark matter searches at the Large Hadron Collider, and his work spans topics from extra dimensions and composite models to the nature of electroweak symmetry breaking.

Tait is an elected Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received the Mentorship Award from the Division of Particles and Fields of the American Physical Society in 2019, the same year he was honored with UC Irvine's Distinguished Mid-Career Faculty Award for Research. He has held visiting positions including Van der Waals Professor at the University of Amsterdam, Kavli Frontier Fellow at the National Academy of Sciences, and Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Fellow with the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Tait has played a substantial role in shaping the field through community leadership, serving as Cosmic Frontier Convener for the Snowmass 2021 Community Study and as a committee member for the National Academies' EPP 2024: Progress & Promise decadal survey. He co-founded the Particles for Justice initiative in 2018, which gained international attention for advocating equity and inclusion in physics. Tait received his Ph.D. in Physics from Michigan State University in 1999 under the supervision of C.-P. Yuan.

Education

• Ph.D. in Physics, Michigan State University, 1999
• M.Sc. in Physics, Michigan State University, 1995
• B.Sc. in Physics, University of California, San Diego, 1993

Distinctions

• Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2024
• Van der Waals Professor, University of Amsterdam, 2017
• Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Fellow, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, 2016
• Kavli Frontier Fellow, National Academy of Sciences, 2017
• Fellow, American Physical Society, 2013
• Mentorship Award, Division of Particles and Fields, American Physical Society, 2019
• Chancellor's Fellow Professor, UC Irvine, 2013-2016
• Distinguished Mid-Career Faculty Award for Research, UC Irvine, 2019
• Herbert T. Graham Scholar, Michigan State University, 1993-1996
• Regents, Merit, and Elizabeth Irvine Memorial Scholar, University of California, 1989