Congratulations to Beka Kelmar for successfully defending her Doctoral Dissertation on November 2nd, 2022. Her thesis titled "USING HECTOR TO STUDY CAPTURE REACTIONS RELEVANT TO THE ASTROPHYSICAL γ-PROCESS" advised by Professor Anna Simon-Robertson…
Daniel Bardayan, Michael Hildreth, and Mitchell Wayne, all professors in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, were elected as fellows in October.
Khachatur Manukyan, research associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Notre Dame, was honored by the 2022 1st Source Bank Commercialization Award for his first U.S. patent, number 9,580,323. The patent, "Method of producing graphene and other graphene carbon materials," was issued in February 2017.
Freimann Professor of Physics Ani Aprahamian has been chosen as an ambassador to STARMUS VI. STARMUS is a global art, music, and science festival taking place for the first time in Yerevan, Armenia on September 5-10, 2022.
The theme is 50 Years on MARS. The aim of STARMUS is to inspire and to educate the next generation of explorers and to regenerate the spirit of discovery. The sixth Starmus is dedicated to Mars, from the very first Soviet MARS 3 to the ambitious manned landing plans and spectacular NASA missions. It has been 50 years since MARS 3 performed the first soft landing on the Red Planet and sent back to the Earth the first image of its surface. This milestone was followed by dozens of successful missions by NASA providing us with more accurate images and information from our neighbor in the Solar System. Following the established tradition, the Festival will address pressing issues and screen films about the exploration of Mars.…
Editors with the American Chemical Society’s Environmental Science and Technology Letters (ES&T) selected the article,“Fluorinated Compounds in North American Cosmetics,” as one of the top five best papers in the journal.
Dr. James deBoer, Associate Research Professor from the Department of Physics and Astronomy, presented new experimental results and evaluation work at a consultancy meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the Vienna International Center. One of the group’s main objectives is to obtain an improved understanding of the reactions that are used by physics and engineers all over the world to design next generation nuclear energy facilities.
Michael Wiescher, the Frank M. Freimann Professor of Physics, presented the German edition of the biography he published on Arthur E. Haas at a symposium organized by the Erwin Schrödinger Institute (ESI) of the University of Vienna. Haas was an Austrian theoretical physicist of Jewish descent who came to University of Notre Dame in 1936 with the recommendation of Albert Einstein.
From June 6 to 10, 2022 the Exotic Beam Summer School (EBSS) attracted 40 graduate students and a post doc from around the country as well as internationally to the University of Notre Dame. This 19th edition of the school, one of the most valued in the low-energy nuclear physics community, was the first after a three years’ hiatus due to the pandemic. Needless to say the students were excited to participate in the series of hands-on activities offered in the afternoon (a unique feature of the EBSS), the morning lectures, as well as the evening social activities.
Ph.D. candidate Ashabari Majumdar advised by Freimann Professor of Physics Ani Aprahamian and Associate Research Professor Khachatur Manukyan won the best poster award at the Annual Midwest Imaging and Microanalysis Workshop on May 11, 2022.
Bryce Frentz successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation on measurements related to one of the slowest reactions within the CNO cycle advised by Professors Ani Aprahamian and Michael Wiescher…
Dr. Jaspreet Randhawa, a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Nuclear Science Laboratory, has been awarded the 2022 FRIB Achievement Award for Early Career Researchers "for his work utilizing a diverse set of tools to understand the nuclear physics of outer layers of accreting neutron stars in X-ray binaries."
Umesh Garg, a professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Notre Dame, received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award to India from the U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
The inauguration of the long-awaited Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), a user facility for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, is Monday, May 2nd. This facility was in discussion and planning for three decades. FRIB will allow researchers to explore the limits of the nuclear force and the origins of the heavy elements in particular.…
Michael Wiescher, Freimann Professor of Physics, has published the German edition his book on the biography of Arthur Haas titled "Arthur E. Haas - Ein verborgener Pioneer der Modernen Physik" and printed by the LIT Verlag in Vienna. The book describes the fate and science of an Austrian Jewish physicist during the first half of the 20th century.
Prof. Umesh Garg is the 2022 recipient of the Dick and Peggy Notebaert Award. This award from the University of Notre Dame Gradaute School recognizes significant contributions to graduate training, including, but not limited to: building a graduate program; securing training grants to fund graduate students; serving with excellence as a director of graduate studies or as a graduate administrative assistant; developing programming or support systems for graduate students, etc.
Freimann Professor of Physics Ani Aprahamian was unanimously re-appointed by the Governor of South Dakota to the South Dakota to the Science and Technology Authority (SDSTA) Board of Directors until December of 2027.
As part of the Notre Dame International Security Center (NDISC), Profs. Mike Desch, Dan Lindley, and Dan Bardayan lead annual Spring Break student trips to visit sites of National Security Interest. NDISC seeks to educate exceptional undergraduate students in the area of international security, broadly defined. This purpose of the trip is twofold: 1) To expose students to the history of the nuclear age through direct immersion in one of the central foci of the development of U.S. nuclear weapons 2) To expose students to the state-of-the-art facilities and capabilities that exist at national defense related sites.
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Freimann Professor of Physics Ani Aprahamian was invited to take part in the 131st session of the Joint Institute of Nuclear Reactions (JINR) Scientific Council in Dubna (Russian Federation) on February 23-25, 2022. The science council was examining the 7-year development plans of the main laboratories of JINR which include Particle Physics, Nuclear Physics, and Condensed Matter Physics.
The 2022 Cornelius P. Browne Memorial Award in Nuclear Physics is shared between two graduate students. Orlando Olivas-Gomez was recognized for his work on searching for branching points in the p-process nucleosynthesis path, and August Gula for the measurements of nuclear reaction processes of interest for first stellar burning.…
Adam Clark received the 2022 Larry O. Lamm Memorial Award in Nuclear Physics. The award is given annually to the student that was deemed to have provided the most outstanding service and dedication to the Nuclear Science Laboratory. The award recognizes Adam’s work and dedication to the maintenance and operations of the SNICS source and the FN accelerator.…