Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
photo courtesy of Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

“I’m one part of the universe, trying to figure out another part of the universe.”

Dr. Prescod-Weinstein proudly hails from the east Los Angeles neighborhood of El Sereno (and yes, she is a Dodgers fan). The 54th Black American woman to earn a Ph.D. from a department of physics (when astronomy and materials science are included, she is number 63), Chanda is a citizen of both the United States and Barbados and is a descendant of Afro-Caribbean and Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants.

After deciding to become a theoretical physicist at the age of 10, at 17, she left East L.A. to attend Harvard College where she earned a Bachelors in Physics and Astronomy and Astrophysics in 2003. After passing the PhD preliminary exam and earning a Masters in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz (2005), she changed research directions and in 2006 moved to the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics to work with Dr. Lee Smolin to work on quantum gravity. She completed her doctoral dissertation, “Cosmic Acceleration as Quantum Gravity Phenomenology,” in late 2010 and graduated from University of Waterloo (Canada) Department of Physics and Astronomy with a PhD in June 2011.

Dr. Prescod-Weinstein is currently an Assistant Professor of Physics and Core Faculty Member in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of New Hampshire. She is also a columnist for New Scientist and Physics World. Her research focuses on theoretical work at the intersection of particle physics, cosmology, and astrophysics. She is interested in scalar dark matter candidates such as axions and axion-like particles, as well as neutron stars and inflationary cosmology and technical issues in quantum field theory in curved spacetime. She is a member of the LSST Dark Matter Group and the STROBE-X Science Working Group, where she leads Team STROBE-Ax. Before coming to the University of New Hampshire, she held a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellowship at Goddard Space Flight Center, a Martin Luther King Postdoctoral Fellowship in Physics at MIT, and was a research associate in the High Energy Theory Group of the Department of Physics at the University of Washington.

Chanda is active in Black feminist science, technology, and society studies. Essence magazine recognized her as one of “15 Black Women Who Are Paving the Way in STEM and Breaking Barriers.” She has been profiled in several venues, including TechCrunch, Ms. Magazine, Huffington Post, Gizmodo, Nylon, and the African American Intellectual History Society’s Black Perspectives. A co-founder of the Particles for Justice movement, she has received the 2017 LGBT+ Physicists Acknowledgement of Excellence Award for her contributions to improving conditions for marginalized people in physics, as well as the 2021 American Physical Society Edward A. Bouchet Award for her contributions to particle cosmology. She self-identifies as a nonlinear combination of theoretical particle physicist, particle cosmology theorist, theoretical cosmologist, and particle astrophysicist, and enjoys thinking broadly and borrowing ideas from across physics to address fascinating problems across the cosmic timeline. She was named to Nature’s list of “Ten People Who Helped Shape Science in 2020,” as well as one of VICE Motherboard’s “Humans2020,” “honoring scientists, engineers, and visionaries who are changing the world for the better.”

Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein:  “I am a Star Trek fanatic. I believe in the Vulcan philosophy of “infinite diversity in infinite combinations” even as I rail against what I call the diversity-and-inclusion racket here on Earth. My own experiences as a Black scientist have led me to believe the night sky is every person’s ancestral heritage and that connecting with the sky is part of what makes us human. Science is a collective human endeavor. My goal is to chip away at what we think we know and what we don’t know in order to expand what we actually know… I believe the Universe is always more amazing than we think it is. Because science is a human endeavor, I am constantly working to ensure that everyone has an equitable opportunity to participate. As a committee chair, past ex-officio board member, and past conference co-chair of the National Society of Black Physicists, I have worked hard to promote Black physicists. As an active member of the National Society of Hispanic Physicists and the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in the Sciences (SACNAS), I work more broadly with other underrepresented minorities to widen participation in physics.”

Dr. Prescod-Weinstein is an advocate for increasing the diversity within science by considering intersectionality and proper celebration of the underrepresented groups who contribute to scientific knowledge production. She has been a member of the executive committee of the National Society of Black Physicists. She is proudly out and was a founding member of the American Astronomical Society Committee for Sexual-Orientation and Gender Minorities in Astronomy (SGMA), where she served as an executive member for six years. She has supported peace and justice through membership in the Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Advisory Council. Chanda is also on the board of governors of Reconstructing Judaism and chairs their Jews of Color and Allies Advisory Group.

In October 2018, Prescod-Weinstein was one of 18 authors of a public letter titled “High Energy Physics Community Statement” hosted on the Particles for Justice website. The statement condemned Alessandro Strumia’s controversial claim at CERN’s first Workshop on High Energy Theory and Gender that male scientists were victims of discrimination. Within a day of publication, nearly 1,600 academics had signed the letter in support, and by October 13, it had received nearly 4,000 signatures.

In June 2020, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, Dr. Prescod-Weinstein and the Particles for Justice group organized a global “Strike for Black Lives.” Chanda authored a note on the Particles for Justice page titled “What I wanted when I called for a Strike for Black Lives.” On June 10, the day of the strike, over 4,500 academics pledged participation in the strike. Additionally, numerous organizations including Nature, the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Institute of Physics supported and/or participated in the strike.

Dr. Prescod-Weinstein is queer and agender. She is married to a lawyer. Her mother Margaret Prescod emigrated from Barbados as a teenager, and in New York was a founder of International Black Women for Wages for Housework in 1974. Chanda is the grandchild of feminist Selma James and the step-granddaughter of Trinidadian writer and historian C.L.R. James.

A Selection of Published Works:

Selections from Dr. Prescod-Weinstein’s Medium Blog:

Reading Lists: