Wendell Hill Named Director of UMD’s Institute for Physical Science and Technology
University of Maryland Professor Wendell Hill has been named director of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology (IPST), effective July 1, 2026. Hill—who joined IPST in 1982 and was promoted to professor in 1996—currently directs the institute’s chemical physics graduate program.
“Wendell Hill’s career reflects the kind of boundary-crossing research that defines IPST,” said Amitabh Varshney, dean of UMD’s College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. “His leadership will help build on the institute’s strong foundation and create new opportunities for discovery, collaboration and innovation.”
IPST’s mission is to pursue interdisciplinary research and education at the boundaries between physics, chemistry, the mathematical and life sciences, and engineering. The institute includes nearly 20 tenured/tenure-track faculty members and 57 graduate students in its biophysics and chemical physics graduate programs. IPST also supports UMD’s node of the Physics of Living Systems student research network, the Burgers Program for Fluid Dynamics, the NCI-UMD Partnership for Integrative Cancer Research, the Science Academy’s quantum computing master’s and graduate certificate programs, and the Applied Mathematics & Statistics and Scientific Computation graduate program.
“I am honored to direct IPST. I want to give back and move IPST forward,” Hill said. “I have benefited greatly from coming up the ranks in IPST. I have been inspired by great mentors here and past directors who led during difficult times, and I want to ensure that our current junior faculty members receive the same attention.”
A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Physical Society, Hill is an affiliate professor in the Department of Physics and has been a Fellow in the Joint Quantum Institute since 2006. His research focuses on laser-matter interaction under extreme conditions—ultra-fast, ultra-intense and ultra-cold. His recent work includes ultracold atoms to study fundamental quantum features, attosecond pulses to probe quantum-correlated electron dynamics in atoms and molecules, and super-intense laser pulses to investigate ephemeral particle-antiparticle pairs that reveal the quantum nature of the vacuum.
He has published more than 150 articles and advised and mentored dozens of undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students and junior faculty members.
He received the National Science Foundation (NSF) Presidential Young Investigator Award (now known as the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers) and the designation of Science Maker by the History Makers. He previously served as director of the NSF’s Atomic, Molecular and Optical Program (2010-12) and as a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Centro de Lasers Pulsados in Spain (2014-22) and the National Academies’ Board on Physics and Astronomy (2016-22).
Hill earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of California, Irvine in 1974 and his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University in 1980.
He takes over as IPST director from Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Christopher Jarzynski, who served in an interim capacity for the past year.
“Directing IPST will be demanding in many ways: the changing funding landscape in the U.S. presents challenges—but they can also create opportunities,” Hill said. “By taking advantage of these opportunities, we will strengthen our relationships across campus and identify new directions in which to invest to build on our strengths.”
