Peter Adshead

Peter Adshead is an Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois, affiliated with the Department of Physics. He holds the Compton Faculty Fellowship and has been part of the faculty since 2014. His research focuses on the early universe, including inflation, cosmic microwave background physics, reheating phase transitions, and connections to high-energy particle physics.

Adshead earned his BSc (First Class Honors) in Physics from the University of Canterbury (New Zealand, 2004) and a PhD in Physics from Yale University (2010). He completed postdoctoral roles at the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics (University of Chicago) and the University of Cambridge before joining Illinois.

He teaches advanced physics courses such as Classical Mechanics I & II (PHYS 325/326) and University Physics series. Students have ranked him as an 'Outstanding Teacher' in multiple semesters, including Fall 2023 and Fall 2019.

Notable awards include the inaugural Compton Fellowship at Illinois Physics. His research bridges particle physics and cosmology, emphasizing theoretical frameworks for early-universe phenomena.