Dr. Philipp Roser received his PhD from Clemson University in 2016 and before joining Western has taught at a variety of community and technical colleges in Whatcom and Skagit counties. He holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Oxford and an M.Sc. in theoretical physics from Imperial College London. Prior to commencing his PhD he spent a year developing data-processing algorithms for the European Space Agency's ACES experiment.

Philipp lives in Bellingham with his wife Jemma and his two sons.

My primary research interest is the "problem of time" in quantum gravity: Why does the naive unification of quantum mechanics with general relativity lead to a "frozen" universe and a host of other technical and conceptual problems? In particular, I am investigating how relational formulations of mechanics and gravity, possibly in conjunction with trajectory-based quantization frameworks, might enable the construction of a consistent theory that would adequately describe the observed physics on both cosmological and microscopic scales. More recently, I have also become interested in the implications of such relational theories of gravity for galactic rotation curves.