Rate My Professor Andre Frankenthal

Andre Frankenthal serves as Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine, having joined the department in January 2025. Hailing from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he obtained his B.A. in Physics from Reed College in 2013, followed by an M.S. in Physics in 2017 and a Ph.D. in Physics in 2020 from Cornell University, where his doctoral advisor was Jim Alexander. His earlier career included a Graduate Research Assistant position at Cornell from 2013 to 2020, and subsequently, from 2020 to 2024, he was a Robert H. Dicke Postdoctoral Fellow and Associate Research Scholar in the Physics Department at Princeton University.

An experimental particle physicist, Frankenthal's research centers on laboratory searches for dark matter particles and their astrophysical implications, employing quantum mechanical principles to study potential dark sector particles at accelerators like CERN and PADME at Frascati. He has made significant contributions to the CMS experiment at the LHC, focusing on dark sectors, rare decays, and innovative data acquisition techniques such as data scouting and parking. Notable publications include the CMS search for inelastic dark matter (Physical Review Letters 132, 041802, 2024), observation of the rare η meson decay to four muons (Physical Review Letters 131, 091903, 2023), and the community report on X17 (European Physical Journal C 83, 230, 2023). With authorship on 345 papers listed on INSPIRE-HEP, Frankenthal has influenced the field through leadership roles, including Convener of the CMS Exotica Non-Hadronic Subgroup since 2023 and CMS Muon Calibration and Alignment Convener from 2020 to 2022. His accolades encompass the Princeton Robert H. Dicke Fellowship, the shared Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2025), the Cornell Albert Silverman Memorial Award (2018), and the Fermilab LPC Guests & Visitors Award (2018-2019). Additionally, he has engaged in teaching, outreach via ParticleBites and HEPMAP, and committee service.