John McDonaugh successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis on March 31, 2026 titled “Constraining the 120Te(γ,n)/(γ,α) branching point for the γ-process nucleosynthesis” advised by Prof. Anna Simon-Robertson.

John’s thesis reports on the measurement of seven proton- and alpha-capture reactions on tin and palladium isotopes to constrain Hauser-Feshbach models in the mass region around A=120. The primary goal of this work is to constrain the branching temperature for the ¹²⁰Te isotope within the γ-process nucleosynthesis path. To achieve this, John utilized the FN accelerator alongside HECTOR, a gamma-ray summing detector. The reaction rates calculated in this study improve our understanding of nucleosynthesis flow and will inform future network calculations of the γ-process.