Peter

Schiffer

Peter Schiffer is dean for research, vice president for Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and the Class of 1909 Professor of Physics at Princeton.

Schiffer leads the Office of the Dean for Research, which supports and enables the full spectrum of Princeton University’s research enterprise by expanding access to funding and other resources, facilitating new projects and partnerships, ensuring policy and regulatory compliance throughout the research lifecycle, and fostering the dissemination of knowledge and the translation of research into advances for societal benefit.

As vice president for Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, he oversees Princeton’s governance and operation of PPPL, a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory managed by Princeton University. PPPL conducts essential research using plasma — the fourth state of matter — to solve some of the world’s toughest science and technology challenges, including the development of fusion energy as a clean, safe and virtually limitless power source.

With an active research program in the Department of Physics in addition to his administrative roles, Schiffer is an experimental condensed matter physicist who holds a B.S. from Yale, a Ph.D. from Stanford, and conducted postdoctoral work at AT&T Bell Laboratories.

Prior to coming to Princeton in 2023, he served as a member of the faculty and an administrator at Yale University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Pennsylvania State University, and a member of the faculty at the University of Notre Dame. He has served on the governing board of the American Physical Society and as a senior fellow with the Association of American Universities.