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Bennett grew up in Seattle, Washington, and received his BS in physics from Rice University in 2025. Working as an undergraduate in Dr. Thomas Killian’s Lab, Bennett studied shockwave dynamics in ultracold plasmas and synthetic dimension quantum simulators.
Ever since the invention of the visible laser over 50 years ago, scientists have been striving to create lasers that generate coherent beams at shorter wavelengths i.e. the extreme UV (EUV) and soft X-ray (SXR) regions of the spectrum. This quest has led to the construction of large facilities, such as kilometer-scale x-ray free-electron lasers, to reach the keV photon energy region.