David Kaplan is a professor of physics at Johns Hopkins University.  He began his undergraduate career at Chapman College as a film major but transferred into the physics program at Berkeley to follow what he considered his true passion.  He received his Ph.D. in 1999 from the University of Washington in Seattle and held research positions at the University of Chicago and Stanford's Linear Accelerator Center before arriving at Hopkins.  He was quickly awarded the Outstanding Junior Investigator prize from the Department of Energy, and the following year was named an Alfred P. Sloan fellow.

David has discovered some of the most recognizable models beyond the standard model in his field, his most influential being those of supersymmetry breaking.  These models will be directly tested at the LHC.  In 2005 he had an epiphany and decided that the lead up to the most monumental scientific event of his lifetime must be captured on film.