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What is the subatomic structure of spacetime?

4D General Relativity is a remarkably successful theory of classical gravitational fields, describing physics we measure in experiments from microscopic scales all the way out to cosmological scales.
Sadly, GR does not make sense as a quantum field theory: it predicts nonsense at ultra-short distances / ultra-high energies.
String theory has proven to be the most promising approach to quantizing gravity so far, and that is why I use it as my toolbox.

What happens to quantum information falling into black holes? Resolving Hawking's famous paradox would be incredibly satisfying.
How does classical spacetime emerge from quantum gravity? c.f.: Qualitatively new emergent phenomena arising in condensed matter systems in the limit of a large number of degrees of freedom.
Where exactly is the quantum-to-classical transition for gravity? And how sensitively does this depend on the precise context?

AdS/CFT holography is one of the most important discoveries in theoretical physics in 25+ years. It is an exact duality between
- full quantum gravity with Anti de Sitter (AdS, or dS) boundary conditions and
- conformal field theory (CFT) in one dimension less.
It is more general than its string theory theory origins, and provides an excellent theoretical laboratory for investigating deep questions about quantum gravity in various dimensions.

I am currently looking for one or two new grad students.
If you might be interested in what I work on, I encourage you to stop by for a chat. I am not a scary monster and I don't bite! 🙂 My office is MP1118 -- aim for Burton Tower, take an elevator up to 11th dimension, and turn left. My campus phone is 83-911.
Suggested courses (in order of importance):-
1. Quantum Field Theory x 2
2. General Relativity x 2
3. depending on your undergraduate background, some of: Statistical Mechanics, Introduction to HEP, Math Methods, Current Interpretations of QM, Entanglement Physics.
For more info online, please visit my home page.