Vedika Khemani

Vedika Khemani (born 1988) is a theoretical physicist and Associate Professor at Stanford University. Her research lies at the intersection of many-body quantum condensed matter physics and quantum information theory.

Early life and education Khemani was born in India and was educated through high-school at La Martiniere Calcutta. She moved to the United States to study physics at Harvey Mudd College, where she completed a senior thesis on gravitational holography. Her undergraduate thesis was awarded the Thomas Benjamin Brown Memorial Award. Alongside her physics courses, Khemani completed courses in mathematics, computer science, economics, linguistics and creative writing. She also took part in robotics programs and competed at national robotics competitions.

After completing her undergraduate degree in 2010, she went on to graduate studies at Princeton University. Following her PhD studies, Khemani was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows.

Research and career Khemani's research focuses on non-equilibrium many-body quantum dynamics. As part of her doctoral research, Khemani identified a novel non-equilibrium phase of matter known as a Floquet time-crystal. Such crystals demonstrate spontaneous breaking of time translation symmetry.

As a current Associate Professor in Physics at Stanford University, Khemani has served as an Executive Committee member at the Stanford Quantum Science and Engineering Initiative (Q-FARM) since 2022.

Awards and honours 2025 U.S. Department of Energy Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) 2024 Infosys Prize in Physical Sciences 2023 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award

2020 Department of Physics at the University of Illinois McMillan Award 2020 American Physical Society George E. Valley Jr. Prize 2020 United States Department of Energy Early Career Award 2020 Sloan Research Fellowship

Select publications

Personal life and education In 2013 Khemani married David Coats, whom she met at Harvey Mudd College.