Kara Hoffman was named chair of the University of Maryland Department of Physics, effective July 1, 2026. Hoffman, who joined UMD in 2004, serves as the principal investigator on the National Science Foundation (NSF) grant that supports the analysis of data taken with the world’s largest neutrino telescope, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole. She has been conducting research at the observatory since the construction of the telescope commenced in 2004.
Scientists have used IceCube to discover a population of high-energy neutrinos originating from outside our galaxy and from within the Milky Way plane. In addition, IceCube has made several contributions to particle physics, including the first observation of the Glashow resonance.
Hoffman’s research has focused on multimessenger astrophysics, which aims to correlate information across multiple telescopes—including optical, gamma-ray and gravitational-wave instruments—often in real time, to identify some of the most energetic objects in our universe and gain a deeper understanding of the physical processes that drive them.
In addition, Hoffman received an NSF Major Research Instrumentation grant that funded the construction of a next-generation neutrino array, the Askaryan Radio Array, also at the South Pole. The array is one of a few instruments pioneering a new detection technique that would extend the sensitivity of neutrino telescopes to higher energies.
Hoffman has held various leadership roles at UMD, including as director of the Center for Experimental Fundamental Physics (2012-15), as a faculty senator (2015-18) and as the department’s associate chair for undergraduate education (2016-20). In the latter role, she restructured the undergraduate laboratory sequence, facilitated the inclusion of active learning in undergraduate courses, recruited new instructors and oversaw the transition to online learning during the pandemic. Hoffman is also a Fellow of the Joint Space-Science Institute and has served in various leadership roles within her field, including as a member of the executive committee of the Division of Particles and Fields at the American Physical Society (2010-13).
She has mentored more than a dozen postdoctoral researchers and graduate students. Hoffman earned her Ph.D. in high-energy physics in 1998 and her master’s degree in physics in 1994 from Purdue University and her bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Kentucky in 1992. Before joining UMD, she was a Fellow at CERN and a research associate at the University of Chicago’s Enrico Fermi Institute.