I am a member of the Computational Science (CPS) and High Energy Physics (HEP) Divisions at Argonne National Laboratory, a Senior Associate of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, and a Senior Institute Fellow in the Northwestern Argonne Institute of Science and Engineering, a joint collaboration between Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University. Currently, I am the Division Director for CPS.
My research interests cover the broad sweep of classical and quantum dynamical systems, from field theories to particles, and from the largest scales to the smallest. Specifically — moving from larger to smaller scales — I have worked on problems in cosmology, astrophysics, accelerator physics, condensed matter physics, atomic and quantum optics, quantum measurement, and particle physics. Some of my more general interests include quantum dynamics of open systems, nonlinear dynamics and nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, stochastic ODEs and PDEs, and advanced statistical methods and machine learning. Although most of my work has been theoretical, I am also involved in experimental and observational projects.
For the last three decades (doesn’t seem that long!) I have been very interested in the intelligent application of parallel supercomputers to attacking physics problems. This has led to algorithm and code development in a variety of fields and on a variety of platforms, beginning with the Connection Machines in the early 1990’s and leading on to the current pre-exascale systems such as Summit at Oak Ridge and getting ready for the exascale systems Aurora and Frontier (at Argonne and Oak Ridge, respectively).
More recently I have become involved in efforts — with cosmology as the primary arena — to apply advanced statistical methods to complex inference problems where the datasets are very large (with small statistical uncertainties) and the forward model predictions involve supercomputer calculations. I am a member of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time Dark Energy Science Collaboration (LSST DESC). I am also a member of the science team on NASA’s SPHEREx all-sky spectral survey satellite mission, with a current launch date some time in 2024.
I am always looking for new things to discuss and think about. Please send me email (habib[at]anl.gov) if interested. Students are most welcome!
My undergraduate preparation was at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and my Ph.D. is from the University of Maryland, obtained under the guidance of Bei-Lok Hu. I was a postdoc with Bill Unruh at the University of British Columbia and postdoc and later staff member in the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory before moving to Argonne in 2011.