Dr. Caleb Q. Cook joined the OSSM faculty in 2022 as a professor of both physics and mathematics. He is an OSSM alumnus, having come to OSSM from Grove, OK. After graduating from OSSM in 2011, Dr. Cook went on to earn undergraduate degrees in physics and mathematics from Harvard College in 2015, a Master of Science in theoretical physics from the University of Waterloo (through the selective Perimeter Scholars International program) in 2016, and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Stanford University in 2022. While at Stanford, Dr. Cook used tools from representation theory to predict the consequences of point anisotropy in hydrodynamic systems, focusing in particular on viscous electron flow in ultra-pure, low-temperature metals.

Dr. Cook returns to OSSM eager to pursue his passion for teaching.  Dr. Cook has previously served as teaching fellow for two courses at Harvard (as an undergraduate) and as a teaching assistant for eight courses at Stanford (as a graduate student); he has also twice taught at the OSSM Summer Academy, having given introductory lectures on both Special Relativity and Quantum Mechanics in the summers of 2017 and 2018. Dr. Cook especially enjoys the challenge of (i) devising his own physics/math problems and (ii) creating compelling, pedagogical physics/math visualizations with computer software such as Mathematica. Both of these pursuits serve Dr. Cook’s larger goal of making advanced concepts in physics and mathematics accessible to the highly-motivated students of OSSM.