2019 Physics Olympics Team Banner

Did you know?

The Olympiad is a nine-day international competition among pre-university students from more than 60 nations. — AAPT.ORG

Director

  • JiaJia Dong

    Academic Director

    Jiajia (JJ) is an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Bucknell University. She discovered her passion in physics rather late in life, probably an anomaly in the physics team: In graduate school, she was exposed to the fast growing field of biophysics and systems biology. It is invigorating to learn about the wonders of a bacterium cell and how its thousands of genes work in concert generation after generation. And using physics to bring quantitative insights continues to drive her curiosity in living systems. "Working with the US physics team" has become a repeating item on her calendar and she is excited to return again!

Coaches

  • Mark Eichenlaub

    Senior Coach

    Mark is a physics curriculum developer at Art of Problem Solving, where he's working to build a community of high school students who love solving physics problems via both online and in-person courses. Mark earned his PhD in physics, focusing on physics education research, at the University of Maryland, where he studied cognitive aspects of problem solving in introductory physics for the life sciences. He has always enjoyed a good physics problem and is looking forward to his fourth summer working with the physics team!

  • Abijith Krishnan

    Junior Coach

    Abijith is a physics and math major at Harvard. After coaching at camp this year, he will be doing research at Harvard over the summer. In his free time, Abijith plays on and now captains BRed Line, Harvard Men's B Ultimate Frisbee Team

  • Kye Shi

    Junior Coach

    Kye Shi is a rising junior at Harvey Mudd College who loves math, physics, and computer science (i.e., basically all the STEMs). In eighth grade, he was introduced to programming while playing Minecraft and has since never stopped building things and thinking about how they work. In high school, he began taking physics lessons with a fabled Dr. Tang and discovered, to his delight, that physics allowed him to understand and interact with the world in a whole new light. Four years later in 2017, he made it on to the U.S. Physics Team and went on to compete in the 2017 IPhO at Yogyakarta, Indonesia. It was the experience of a lifetime, evidently: he's back for more--this time as a coach--and he can barely wait to hang out with the cool 2019 physics kids over exciting dinner table conversations, late-night dominion games, and thrilling five-hour exams!

  • Brian Skinner

    Coach

    Brian is a postdoctoral researcher in theoretical condensed matter physics. While the majority of his work relates to electronic systems, he likes to find creative uses for physics, and has written research papers on topics ranging from pedestrian crowds to traffic networks to the optimal performance of basketball teams. In his spare time he likes reading novels, playing basketball, and boxing. He will be joining the faculty at Ohio State University in the spring.

  • Kevin Zhou

    Coach

    Kevin is a graduate student at Oxford. After camp, he'll start a PhD at Stanford in particle physics, focused on tracking down the hidden dark matter in the universe and the best bubble tea in Palo Alto. He attended physics camp and IPhO in 2012 and 2013 and is excited to be returning for a fourth year coaching.

Contact Information

For more details and information about the U.S. Physics Team, please contact AAPT's Programs department at 301-209-3340 or programs@aapt.org