About

Stella Schindler is a theoretical physicist researching the structure and dynamics of matter. Her primary focus is quantum chromodynamics (QCD), a mathematical theory describing the strong force that binds quarks and gluons into everyday particles like protons and neutrons. She also pursues cross-disciplinary research problems that share mathematical features with QCD. 

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's sister Bibi observed these dynamics and wisely decided to become a litigator.) 

Stella currently works in Physics Division P-3 at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she holds a Hoffman Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship. There, she was recognized as a University of California Interdisciplinary Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting Fellow.  Since 2025, she has been an Associate of the Harvard Physics Department, hosted by the high energy theory and artificial intelligence (AI) group of Matt Schwartz. She is also a regular at the MIT CTP-LI. From 2024-2025, she was also a long-term visitor at WashU, hosted by nuclear theorist Mike Ogilvie and condensed matter theorist Zohar Nussinov. 

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, Stella was supported by a five-year MIT Physics Department fellowship and a Graduate Research Fellowship from the U.S. National Science Foundation, and her doctoral work was honored with the Sakurai Dissertation Award from the American Physical Society. 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 at the Technion on non-Hermitian optics, W.E. Moerner at Stanford on single-molecule optics, and Christine Floss at WashU 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.