Research

Peter van Nieuwenhuizen's research area is quantum field theory with applications to supergravity, supersymmetry, and string theory. He is one of the inventors of supergravity, which was discovered here at Stony Brook in 1976 (Nieuwenhuizen received the Dirac Medal and Prize in 1993). He is interested in Kaluza-Klein reductions of supergravities, the measure for path integrals, instantons, and quantum corrections, etc. Nieuwenhuizen is also interested in ideas such as a Chern-Simons term for 11 dimensional supergravity, anticommuting coordinates in a new kind of superspace. He likes to work closely with graduate students, and organizes the so-called Friday seminars, where graduate students help prepare seminars for their peers and faculty on new developments in theoretical physics. He has served as advisor to 15 Ph.D students, nine of whom have faculty positions, and four of whom are postdoctoral fellows. Nieuwenhuizen has written 280 articles on his research.