Amber D. Miller

Dean of USC Dornsife
Anna H. Bing Dean’s Chair
Professor of Physics and Astronomy

Amber D. Miller is Dean of USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Her research focuses on experimental cosmology – leading teams focused on building, deploying, and observing with telescopes designed to probe the conditions in the universe when it was much less than one second old. Miller and her colleagues examine relic light from the early universe with the goal of understanding the origin, evolution and fundamental nature of the universe.

Miller received her M.A. and Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University and her B.A. in physics and astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley. Before joining USC Dornsife in August 2016 as its 22nd — and first female — dean, she served as dean of science for Columbia University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, where she was also a professor of physics.

Remington Gerras

Graduate Student

I graduated from University of Michigan in 2017 with a B.S in Physics and German, along with a minor in Computer Science.

After working for a year, I started graduate school and joined Dr. Amber Miller’s lab in 2020. My research is entirely focused on Simons Observatory (SO), a ground based telescope array being developed to study the cosmic microwave background at unprecedented resolution. The bulk of my research includes designing software/hardware interfaces and optical testing on SAT-1, one of three Small Aperture Telescopes a part of SO. When I’m not staring at my screen for work, I’m staring at my screen for fun. I like to play videogames, and try to play basketball or tennis in my free time as well.