Breaking boundaries in physics

Ajeeta Khatiwada ’10 named 2025 Outstanding Young Alumnus

Ajeeta Khatiwada ’10 grew up in Nepal dreaming of a career in physics — an ambitious path in a place where research opportunities were scarce and resources even scarcer.

She made that dream a reality.

Today, Ajeeta is a staff scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), working at the cutting edge of nuclear data, machine learning and national security. She’s a co-recipient of the prestigious Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics awarded for her work with the CMS experiment at CERN between 2015 to July 15, 2024 and recently earned the LANL’s LDRD Early Career Award.

But long before she led research teams or worked with the Large Hadron Collider, Ajeeta was a determined transfer student searching for the right academic fit. She found it at Linfield.

Mentorship, momentum and the making of a scientist

Ajeeta first came to the U.S. to study physics at a small university in Louisiana. Looking for a stronger academic foundation, she set her sights on Linfield, where her sister was already studying physics. Finances were a major barrier, but with help from the late Floyd Schrock and Linfield’s largest scholarship for international students, she made the leap.

She arrived on campus ready to work — and she did. Ajeeta supported herself by grading homework, tutoring students, teaching physics labs and working at the campus store, The Observatory. Those experiences, combined with Linfield’s small class sizes and personalized mentorship, helped sharpen her teaching and leadership skills.

She still remembers fondly Quantum Physics with Professor Joelle Murray, who paired students together each week, so that one would verbally explain the solution and the other wrote it on the board. This unique and highly interactive teaching method made learning both challenging and fun.

The support of mentors like Professors Joelle Murray, Tianbao Xie, Michael Crosser and the late Donald Schnitzler helped Ajeeta thrive. She graduated summa cum laude in 2010 with a B.S. in physics.

A career at the frontiers of science

After Linfield, Ajeeta earned a Ph.D. in experimental particle physics from Florida State University, conducting research at the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. Her work tested the Standard Model and searched for new phenomena to help explain how matter and the universe came to exist.

From there, her research expanded into heavy-ion physics research using data collected by the PHENIX experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory, x-ray radiography and machine learning applications in physics. At Los Alamos, her current work leverages artificial intelligence to advance nuclear data — information that informs fields ranging from fundamental physics to cybersecurity and national defense.

Her current project, supported by LANL’s LDRD Early Career Award, focuses on building a machine learning framework to better understand photonuclear data — how light interacts with matter at the atomic level.

Additionally, Ajeeta is author of more than 550 peer-reviewed publications. She currently holds the highest h-index among all scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, a measure of sustained research influence.

A global leader, a local mentor

Ajeeta’s impact extends far beyond the lab.

In 2018, she co-led a particle physics winter school in Nepal for graduate students through the international Physics Without Frontiers initiative, co-sponsored by CERN and the International Centre for Theoretical Physics. Closer to home, she volunteers in schools near Native American communities around Los Alamos, helping students build confidence and competence in STEM.

She also mentors postdoctoral students, serves as chair of LANL’s LDRD exploratory research review panel for Computational Methods and Computer Science and sits on the executive committee of the American Physical Society’s Four Corners section. She’s even advocated for the physics community in Congress twice.

Launched by Linfield

For all her global reach, Ajeeta still traces her academic foundation — and her personal growth — back to Linfield.

She describes her time here as transformative: a place where she gained more than a degree.

“Linfield gave me not just a strong academic foundation, but also a second home. My host family, Richard and Donna Weed, became a vital support system while I was so far from Nepal,” she said. “It wouldn’t be wrong to say that I arrived at Linfield as a girl full of dreams and graduated as an independent young woman — someone who was able to achieve everything she has because of the strong foundation Linfield provided.”