Tom Shutt

Thomas Shutt has been appointed the first holder of the Agnar Pytte chair in the department of physics. Named in honor of Case President Emeritus (and physicist) Agnar Pytte, who led the university from 1987 to 1999, the chair was endowed through a generous gift from The Sherman Fairchild Foundation. The Pytte endowment supports an eminent scholar in the field of condensed matter physics, particle theory, particle astrophysics, or cosmology.

Formerly on the faculty of Princeton University, Shutt, a particle physicist, joins the College as an associate professor. He received his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1993.

As a new member of Case's Center for Education and Research in Cosmology and Astrophysics (CERCA), Shutt has renewed a collaboration with physicist Daniel Akerib that began at UC Berkeley, where the two were postdoctoral fellows. Both Shutt and Akerib are currently involved in the XENON project, a consortium of scientists from Case, Columbia, Brown, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, and the University of Florida who are engaged in the search for dark matter in the universe.

In addition to hiring current Case graduate students for his research group, Shutt has brought with him from Princeton two third-year graduate students, Eric Dahl and John Kwong. He will also be joined by Alexander Bolozdynya, a research associate who formerly worked with Akerib but is now a member of the XENON team.

"I'm thrilled to have Tom here. He wonderfully complements the existing program," said Akerib. "Given our closely related science goals, we will have the opportunity to work together again on joint projects, including XENON, and take advantage of synergies, each other's expertise, and intellectual ties between members of our groups."