Mark Trodden

As Associate Dean for the Natural Sciences, Mark Trodden oversees the Departments of Biology, Chemistry, Earth and Environmental Science, Linguistics, Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy, and Psychology, as well as several research centers.

Trodden is a distinguished theoretical cosmologist and particle physicist whose work explores the border between those subfields, focusing particularly on the early universe, dark energy, and tests of gravity. He is an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and the U.K.’s Institute of Physics. He has also served as a member of the U.S. High Energy Physics Advisory Panel and is currently a member of the Committee on Science and the Arts of the Franklin Institute.

Trodden served as Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy from 2014 to 2022 and has served as co-director of the Center for Particle Cosmology since 2009. He is a former chair of the School of Arts & Sciences’ Personnel Committee, has been a member of the School’s Planning and Priorities Committee, and in 2016 chaired a school-wide Task Force on Standing Faculty Assessment. He has been a member of the Penn faculty since 2009.