Richard Scalettar is a computational physicist whose research focuses on using quantum simulations to explain magnetism, superconductivity, and charge-ordered phases. He grew up in El Toro in Southern California and got his undergraduate degrees at UC Irvine. He went to graduate school at UC Santa Barbara, and became a Professor at UC Davis in 1989, after a postdoctoral research appointment at the University of Illinois.
He received the Chancellor's Outstanding Undergraduate Mentor Award in 2009 and has been teaching in COSMOS since 2001. Richard's sister, Bethe, is a professor of biophysics at Lewis and Clark College in Portland Oregon, where she uses microscopy to image protein motion in cells. The photo shows Richard in his sister's office, with her pet rats "Salt" and "Pepper". They like to eat Bethe's vegetarian burritos.
