Omar A. Ashour

Omar A. Ashour

Graduate Student Researcher

UC Berkeley

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

Biography

I am a sixth year PhD student in physics at UC Berkeley, working with Sinéad Griffin at Berkeley Lab. My research primarily lies at the interface of condensed matter physics, high-energy particle physics, and quantum sensing, but my interests are broad and extend to areas like nonlinear physics and quantum algorithms. See below for an overview of my research and publications.

Before joining Berkeley Physics, I earned my BS from Texas A&M university in 2017 and then served as a Berkeley Graduate Fellow, completing my MS in Applied Physics in 2019. During this time, I mainly worked on problems in nonlinear dynamics, particularly classically integrable systems.

I maintain a separate website for my pedagogical and research notes. On a personal level, my hobbies include building mechanical keyboards and finishing every side quest in RPGs then quitting before ever starting the main story. I live with my wife, dog, and two cats in the SF Bay Area.

Education
  • PhD, Physics, May 2025

    UC Berkeley

  • MA, Physics, 2020

    UC Berkeley

  • MS, Applied Physics (AS&T), 2019

    UC Berkeley

  • BS, Electrical Engineering/Optics, 2017

    Texas A&M University

Highlighted Publications

See my Google Scholar for a complete and updated list of publications.
Effects of strain, defects, and interactions on the topological properties of HfTe$_5$
Higher-order breathers as quasi-rogue waves on a periodic background
Multiple Strong Topological Gaps and Hexagonal Warping in Bi$_4$Te$_3$