Rate My Professor Colin Morningstar

Colin Morningstar is a Professor of Physics in the Department of Physics at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Particle Physics from the University of Toronto in 1991, an M.Sc. in Theoretical Particle Physics in 1986, and a B.Sc. in Physics in 1985 with High Distinction, earning the James Loudon Gold Medal in Physics and the Governor-General’s Silver Medal. His academic career includes postdoctoral positions at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (1991–1993), University of Edinburgh (1993–1995), and University of California, San Diego (1995–1999), followed by an Assistant Professorship at Florida International University (1999–2000). He joined Carnegie Mellon University as Assistant Professor in 2000, was promoted to Associate Professor with indefinite tenure in 2006, and to Full Professor in 2010.

Morningstar’s research centers on nonperturbative phenomena in quantum field theories, with emphasis on hadron formation and quark confinement in quantum chromodynamics through lattice QCD Monte Carlo simulations on supercomputers such as NSF XSEDE and DOE INCITE facilities. Highlights include the first comprehensive glueball spectrum in pure Yang-Mills theory and the spectrum of heavy-quark hybrid mesons in the leading Born-Oppenheimer approximation. Current efforts involve ab initio determinations of excited baryon and meson spectra. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Influential publications include “Glueball spectrum from an anisotropic lattice study” (1999), “Analytic smearing of link variables in lattice QCD” (2004), “Glueball spectrum and matrix elements on anisotropic lattices” (2006), and recent papers such as “Two-pole nature of the Λ(1405) from lattice QCD” (2024) and “Lattice QCD study of πΣ − K¯N scattering and the Λ(1405) resonance” (2024). His contributions have advanced hadron spectroscopy and QCD understanding through extensive collaborations.