Time as a faculty member is a more precious resource than I ever imagined. As such, I can be kind of hard to contact. If you are trying to find me to talk about something, email is my preferred method --- it gives me a chance to defer answering until I have a chance to respond thoughtfully to whatever you might be asking. Some more general contact notes: Telephone: I don't answer my phone when I'm in the office unless I recognize the caller on my caller ID, and I'm not busy with something else. I generally hate receiving unsolicited phone calls --- if I'm in the office, I'm working, and I don't appreciate being interrupted. If you would like to speak on the phone, please send me an email and set up an appointment first. I hate acting like such a prima donna, but I can't get anything done unless I control my schedule very carefully. (As one of my colleagues likes to say "I have lots of free time; it just all comes in 5 minute blocks.") Brilliant theories: If you have found the Ultimate Theory of the Universe, discovered how to tap into the energy of the vacuum, or have found the meaning of life in the pattern of hotspots in the cosmic microwave background, I'm very happy for you, but I really don't care to hear about it. Science questions: If you are a student with a question that you think I may be able to answer, I am generally happy to do so. An example of a question that I am likely to answer (though it may take me a few days to clear out enough time to do so with care) is

I'm a high school student doing a report on black holes. If you could help me to understand the following thing I read about, I would really appreciate it.

A bad example is

Hey dude, I was wondering about black holes. Could you like tell me about them? Oh, and could you send me a 1 page single spaced answer by like tomorrow at 8 am? That's when my report is due.

I'm very sad to report that the bad example is based on a real email I received (albeit I've improved the spelling and grammar).

Science is an international endeavor. One of the greatest joys of this career, especially as someone who grew up in a small and fairly homogeneous town, has been the opportunity to visit many places around the world, and to meet (and in some cases, collaborate with) people from backgrounds very different from my own. Despite our superficial differences, we tend to be interested in and excited by very similar things.

Unfortunately, I can no longer trust that my communications with people around the world are going to be kept private, and that certain people in positions of power are going regard answering people's curious questions as an innocuous intellectual activity. I may ignore your email if I have legitimate concern that entering into correspondence with you may be miscontrued by my nation's Dear Leader or the Very Stable Geniuses that he employs as a hostile action. I am sorry to do this, but I must protect myself and my family.

I sometimes get queries about coming to MIT. If time permits, I can sometimes answer general questions, but please bear in mind that I'm not officially connected to admissions (undergraduate or graduate). The people who can tell you about admissions are here. (Specific information about the MIT physics Ph.D. program is here.) If you are interested in my research group, please see the discussion under the "People" link on my research group's webpage.

Sometimes people from outside MIT write to me asking if they can join my research group for a "summer internship," or for a similar short term research project. The answer is always, unequivocally, no. To be blunt, such a short time frame is not long enough for someone to make a meaningful contribution to my group's research program. And, if I have time to supervise a student, I will work with an MIT student. As an MIT professor, working with MIT students is my top priority.

If, despite what I have clearly written here, you decide to send me an obsequious email requesting a "summer internship" anyway, I will delete it without response. If you decide to follow up with multiple queries asking why I haven't fallen over myself to support you, I will delete those queries without response. Such emails demonstrate either that you didn't actually look into the information I have on the web, or that having done so you just don't care about what I have written above. Neither of those traits helps your case.

Please bear in mind I don't enforce these rules to be a jerk; my time is seriously limited. Telephone interruptions, email queries, and interruptions of various sorts really do take a lot of time out of my day. I'm happy to talk with just about anyone reasonable, but I must insist on keeping access somewhat limited. Otherwise, I'd get nothing done, and I wouldn't be someone you'd care to speak with...