Exact results in gauge/gravity dualities

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My research is tightly connected to two major unsolved questions in theoretical physics: the first concerns quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the physical theory which best describes the properties of the particles which make up protons and neutrons in atomic nuclei. Our current techniques are manifestly insufficient to study this theory at "everyday" energies; new theoretical and mathematical tools are urgently needed to understand QCD. This is even more important given that upcoming accelerator experiments, such as those at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, will conduct experimental investigations into the constituents of matter, and are expected to detect new particles and forces. The second question, which has vexed theoretical physicists for even longer, concerns the seeming irreconcilability of relativistic quantum field theory, which governs the subatomic world, and the theory of general relativity, which describes large-scale astrophysical phenomena (including gravity) by using the concept of space-time geometry. When we try to address cosmological questions about the origin of the universe, or when we study black hole singularities, we need to deal with both quantum mechanics and gravity at the same time, and our current models break down. String theory is the most promising candidate for a unified description of quantum mechanics and gravity - or quantum gravity.