Shanshan Rodriguez
Assistant Professor of Physics, Grinnell College
Office: Noyce 1034
Lab: Noyce 0131
Email: rodriguezs@grinnell.edu
Prof. Shanshan Rodriguez is a theoretical physicist specializing in gravitation and black hole physics. She earned her B.S. from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2004 and her Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 2010. Following her doctoral studies, she spent four years as a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and later taught at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She joined the Physics faculty at Grinnell College in 2018, where she co-leads the Black Hole Thermodynamics and Phenomenology (BHTP) Group with Prof. Leo Rodriguez. The BHTP group at Grinnell studies black hole thermodynamics and phenomenology, plasma astrophysics, and connections between gravitational theories and condensed matter physics.
Besides doing physics, Shanshan also enjoys cooking, singing and playing piano.
Current Research Students
William (Coleman) Horner (’24, Grinnell Post-Bac)
Project: Shadow of a rotating BH in Conformal Weyl Gravity
Connor McMillin (’26)
Projects:
- Shadow of a rotating BH (PHY499 – Summer MAP 2025)
- Circular geodesics of a Kerr-like BH in dark matter halo (PHY399 – S25)
- Geometrodynamics of a 2D curved surface due to a quantum-confined particle (PHY399 – Summer MAP 2023)
Zhichen Guan (’26)
Project: Circular geodesics of a Kerr-like BH in dark matter halo (PHY399 – S25)
Owen Gartlan (’27)
Project: Superradiance of a rotating BH (PHY499 – Summer MAP 2025)
Lotus Liu (’27)
Project: Shadow of a rotating BH (PHY499 – Summer MAP 2025)
Evan Shen (’27)
Project: Superradiance of a rotating BH (PHY499 – Summer MAP 2025)
Former Research Students (since 2021)
Alex Sidler (’25)
Project: Energy extraction via magnetic reconnection from a rotating charged BH in perfect fluid dark matter (PHY499 – 2023-2024)
Haozhi Liu (’25)
Project: Energy extraction via magnetic reconnection from a rotating BH (PHY499 – Summer MAP 2023)
Henry Bridgers (’24)
Project: Particle orbits simulation in rotating BH (PHY399- S24)
John Riley O’Toole (’24)
Lucas Hadding (’24)
Alex Love (’23)
Noah Enerson (’23)
Project: BH energy extraction via magnetic reconnection (PHY397 – Spring 2023)
Nesibe (Derin) Sivrioglu (’23) Quentin Dancewicz Helmers (’22)
Project: BH entropy using Noether current method (PHY499- Summer MAP 2021)