Jennifer Pore, a Research Scientist in the Low Energy Nuclear Physics Program, was selected to receive funding through the DOE Office of Science Early Career Research Program. Dr. Pore’s project, “Investigating the Fundamental Properties of the Heaviest Elements,” will be at the intersection of Nuclear Physics and Chemistry and utilize LBNL’s Berkeley Gas-Filled Separator (BGS) and FIONA devices to study the physical and chemical properties of Superheavy Elements. Funding for the five year award will be jointly provided by the DOE Office of Science Nuclear Physics and Basic Energy Sciences programs. Further details can be found here.
Lisa Schlueter, a Postdoc in NSD’s Neutrinos Program, won third place in the LBNL Research SLAM for her three-minute presentation, “Why our universe shouldn’t exist”. Lisa will advance to the regional Bay Area SLAM on October 3 to compete against the finalists from Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Sandia National Labs, and SLAC National Lab. Congratulations and good luck, Lisa!
Florian Jones, a Postdoc in NSD’s Relativistic Nuclear Collisions Program, received an ALICE 20204 thesis award for his dissertation “Probing the initial state of heavy-ion collisions with isolated prompt photons“. Florian received his PhD from Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany. His graduate career included a significant stay at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Congratulations also to graduating PhD student Ezra Lesser, from UC Berkeley, for his ALICE 2024 thesis award for his dissertation “”Measurements of jet substructure in pp and Pb-Pb collisions at ⎷sNN = 5.02 TeV with ALICE”. These studies reported in two publications were developed with RNC scientists. The results in pp are already published in JHEP and the publication on results in Pb-Pb collisions is in the final stages of approval and will be released over the summer. Photographs of the July 9th presentation ceremony and the full list of award winners are available at https://alice-collaboration.web.cern.ch/Thesis_award2024
Brian Quiter and Jayson Vavrek from NSD’s Applied Nuclear Physics Program celebrated service awards. Brian marked 15 years with LBNL, while Jayson marked 5 years.
Zhengwei Xue was hired as a Scientific Engineering Associate in the RNC Program. Joanna Szornel was promoted to Research Scientist in the Applied Nuclear Physics Program. Welcome, Zhengwei and congratulations to Joanna!
NSD received several new funding awards including one from the United States Nuclear Data Program (USNDP) to train the next generation of nuclear data evaluators, and a number of new projects supported by the National Nuclear Security Administration Office for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development.
It is with deep sadness that we have learned of the passing of Frank Stephens on Sunday, August 18, 2024. Frank will be remembered for the enormous impact on the field of Low Energy Nuclear Physics. He started at Berkeley Lab as a Research Chemist in 1955, became a Senior Scientist two years into his career at the Lab, and was appointed as a Distinguished Scientist in 1995 before retiring from a career with many highlights in 1997. Frank was an inspiration to those he worked with. He will be greatly missed. An obituary and further information can be found here.
