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Jim Gates    

Theoretical Physicist Serving on President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology

Sylvester James Gates, Jr., known as Jim Gates, is an American theoretical physicist, known for work on supersymmetry, supergravity and superstring theory. He is currently the Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, College Park, a University of Maryland Regents Professor and serves on President Barack Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Gates received SB (1973) and PhD (1977) degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His doctoral thesis was the first at MIT on supersymmetry. With M. T. Grisaru, M. Rocek and W. Siegel, Gates coauthored "Superspace, or One thousand and one lessons in supersymmetry" (1984), the first comprehensive book on supersymmetry.

Gates was nominated by the Department of Energy as one of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's "Nifty Fifty" Speakers to present his work and career to middle and high school students in October 2010. He is on the board of trustees of Society for Science & the Public.

Gates was a Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Scholar at MIT (2010-11) and was a Residential Scholar at MIT's Simmons Hall. He is pursuing ongoing research into string theory, supersymmetry and supergravity at the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics. His research focuses on Adinkra symbols as representations of supersymmetric algebras.

On February 1, 2013, Gates was a recipient of the National Medal of Science.

Gates has been featured extensively on NOVA PBS programs on physics, notably "The Elegant Universe." He completed a DVD series titled "Superstring Theory: The DNA of Reality" for The Teaching Company consisting of 24 half-hour lectures to make the complexities of unification theory comprehensible to laypeople. During the 2008 World Science Festival, Gates narrated a ballet "The Elegant Universe," where he gave a public presentation of the artistic forms connected to his scientific research. Gates also appeared in the BBC Horizon documentary "The Hunt for Higgs" in 2012.

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Jim Gates - Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers
Science: Jim Gates is a theoretical physicist who studies string and makes up theories. ... Jim Gates explains that much of his work involves making things up.

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