Eva Silverstein is an associate professor of physics at Stanford University and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) whose research on string theory has focused on vacuum stability, connections among string backgrounds, supersymmetry breaking, and cosmology. She was one of the first to suggest a semi-realistic theory of vacuum stabilization, and with several collaborators she recently initiated an investigation that found a physical mechanism that may explain why the most beautiful and symmetric states and laws are realized in physics. She has determined where certain basic instabilities drive string theory backgrounds, culminating recently in work with collaborators on a new mechanism for topology changing transitions, including processes changing the number of components of space. A graduate of Harvard University, Dr. Silverstein received her Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University in 1996. After a year as a postdoctoral associate at Rutgers University, she joined the faculty of SLAC as an assistant professor in 1997. She was appointed to her present position in 2001. The recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship in 1999, she also has held an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship and Outstanding Junior Investigator Award given by the United States Department of Energy and the U.S.-Israel Bi-national Science Foundation's Bergmann Memorial Research Award. Dr. Silverstein has given numerous invited lectures and is the author of more than fifty scientific papers.