Stanford University profile page (includes my academic cv and a more inclusive resume)
About
A physicist by training, Hideo explores a nexus of conventional scientific research, craft (as a dedicated ceramist and occasional weaver), applied philosophy, and integrative education.
Hideo teaches and directs a research laboratory at Stanford University as a Professor of Applied Physics. His group’s sponsored research focuses mainly on quantum optics and physics of computation; his personal research further extends to the science of traditional craft materials and processes. Hideo teaches undergraduate courses that center craft and student making, bridging STEM fields with the arts and humanities. He currently serves on the Committee in Charge of the Program in Modern Thought and Literature and as Denning Family Director of the Stanford Arts Institute.
Hideo (he/him) was born and raised in Massachusetts, received formal degrees from Princeton (A.B. in Physics, 1992) and Caltech (Ph.D. in Physics, 1998), and served on the Caltech faculty for nine years before moving to Stanford in 2007. In 2000 he received a Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which brought him into community with invaluable new mentors and role models.
Speaking
Second Nature Podcast, 2025
Cantor Arts Center (with Megan Riepenhoff)
Art & Podcast, 2025
Stanford Arts (with Ellen Oh)
Japanese Functional Objects, 2022
Stanford News video production
Function and Metaphor, 2021
NCECA Annual Meeting
artist’s statement
Seek/make; relate/reflect; teach/write — these are the phases of my creative cycle. Various works result: objects, essays and talks, images and data, derivations, courses. Intuition drives the cycle and the cycle serves to refine and expand intuition — intuition about what is interesting, what is beautiful, what matters.
I do feel that beauty matters. It’s something you seek not something you make. It’s something you chase, something constitutively elusive. But you can find its tracks and frame them. You can find them in materiality, in hidden structures (both microscopic and mathematical), and in unexpected, far-flung connections.
I work with different kinds of frames. Ceramic objects are great frames for materiality, but less so for theoretical insights or surprising points of contact between ideas and historicity. Lately I’ve come to think of the courses I teach as one of my primary creative outlets. They are handy frames for my favorite connections among science, art, craft, and the humanities. They are opportunities to invite others into my cycle.
And there is writing. There is always writing — choosing words to externalize the cycle, an evolving intuition making tracks. Even if no one follows, it helps to see where you are.
seek | make | relate | reflect | teach
Get in touch
Hideo can be reached via DM on Instagram (link below), or by email at hmabuchi at stanford dot edu.
Writing
The Art & Science of Knowing Things
(Mint Museum) February 2020
Disjunction
(SFMOMA) March 2022
Reflections on Colorspace
(MacArthur X-Grants) September 2022