Robert R. Jones is the Francis H. Smith Professor of Physics at the University of Virginia. Professor Jones has been a member of the University of Virginia faculty for 25 years. He has designed and taught a variety of physics courses with content spanning a wide range of student preparation levels, from a half-dozen distinct introductory physics for non-scientists, engineering, or physics students, to graduate courses in atomic physics, photonics, and ultrafast laser spectroscopy. His classroom work was recognized with an All University of Virginia Teaching Award in 2008.

Professor Jones’ research group uses well-controlled, extremely brief and intense pulses of laser light as tools to manipulate and view quantum behavior of atoms and molecules. He has been the recipient of a number of research awards including the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering. He has participated on numerous science advisory and professional service committees and panels, and currently serves as the Chair of the American Physical Society’s Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics.

Professor Jones was born and raised in the “heart of Cajun country” in Lafayette, Louisiana. He graduated first in his class from the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette), with a double major B.S. in Physics and Mathematics. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Virginia and spent three years as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan prior to joining the University of Virginia faculty. Professor Jones and his wife, Julia, live in Charlottesville and have three children.