About

Stella Schindler is a theoretical physicist researching quantum chromodynamics (QCD), a mathematical theory describing subatomic particles called quarks and gluons, and the strong force that binds them together into everyday particles like protons and neutrons. She currently works in the Theoretical Division T-2 at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she holds a Hoffman Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship. 

QCD research was an unexpected turn for Stella, who originally experimented with everything from astrophysics to biophysics. The summer before Stella started grad school, her parents told her that if she wanted to use the car, she'd have to drive her high school-aged brother Mo to his lattice QCD research job with Mike Ogilvie at Washington University in St. Louis. Little did she know, she had started driving down her own future research path, and her summer responsibility evolved into multiple co-authored papers and eventually a chapter of Stella's Ph.D. thesis. (Mo, on the other hand, was poached by their older brother into industry after college.) 

Stella received her Ph.D. at the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics working on QCD and effective field theory under the supervision of Iain Stewart. There, she was supported by a five-year MIT Physics Department fellowship and a Graduate Research Fellowship from the U.S. National Science Foundation. Stella received her master’s in Physics, double majors in Mathematical Physics and Italian, and a minor in Music at Washington University in St. Louis, where she held a full-ride Compton Fellowship and a National Merit Scholarship. Stella wrote her master’s thesis on non-Hermitian quantum mechanics under the supervision of Carl Bender. She also spent summers working in the labs of Moti Segev on non-Hermitian optics, W.E. Moerner on single-molecule optics, and Christine Floss on stardust. St. Louis is Stella’s hometown, and she started taking courses towards her master’s degree in her senior year of high school.

Stella is passionate about strengthening our nuclear and particle physics workforce through improvements to physics education, training, and development; workplace climate; as well as outreach that helps us inspire, recruit, and cultivate scientific talent from all backgrounds. At MIT, Stella helped make strides in these areas as President of the Physics Graduate Student Council and Co-Chair of the Physics Department Values Committee. For her contributions, she was awarded the Graduate Student Prize for Service from the MIT Physics Department and a Service Fellowship from the MIT School of Science. At WashU, Stella served as President of the Society of Physics Students and a representative on the Physics Department’s Workplace Climate Committee. She received the Ethan A.H. Shepley Award for leadership, scholarship, and service to the campus community as well as the Outstanding Senior Leader Award from WashU for her contributions.