Due to budgetary constraints— we will soon reach our limit of five Theory Fellows starting in October — we will not be issuing a call for partners or conducting a search this Fall. We are hopeful that we will be able to resume with another call/search in Fall 2025.
The FRIB Users Organization Executive Committee and FRIB Theory Alliance Executive Board are pleased to announce the winners of the 2024 FRIB Achievement Award for Early Career Researchers.
The 2024 recipient for the Experimental Award is Dr. Tim Gray, University of Tennessee, for their path-breaking work on Decay Spectroscopy at FRIB.
The 2024 Theory Award recipient is Dr. Chloë Hebborn, Michigan State University, for their innovative work describing nuclear reactions on exotic nuclei.
The FRIB Achievement Award for Early Career Researchers was established to recognize outstanding original contributions to the field of nuclear physics through work at or relating to FRIB, performed by scientists early in their careers. The recipients will present their work during the plenary session at the Low Energy Community Meeting and receive a stipend to support their participation.
Please join us in congratulating this year's winners.
Andrew Ratkiewicz and Jon Engel
on behalf of the FRIBUOEC and FRIBTAEB
The FRIB Theory Alliance conducted a search for a new FRIB theory fellow in the Fall of 2023. The search committee received excellent applications and selected a shortlist of five. The interviews took place in-person at FRIB in December 2023. Following the recommendation of the search committee Francesca Bonaiti was selected as the new FRIB theory fellow. Francesca’s research is focused on the calculation of electromagnetic reaction observables such as electric dipole polarizabilities and isoscalar monopole resonances, which strongly correlate with parameters of the nuclear equation of state. As FRIB theory fellow, Francesca aims to extend ab initio calculations of these quantities to neutron-rich nuclei, where constraints on the nuclear equation of state can be obtained in synergy with future experiments at FRIB. Her research in nuclear many-body physics also has potential implications for research at the interface of nuclear structure and astrophysics, for instance in studies of beta-decay rates, which are a key input for nucleosynthesis simulations. Francesca will be hosted by Oak Ridge National Laboratory starting in Fall 2024. Please join the FRIB-TA in congratulating Francesca and wishing her much success!
For more details on Fellows see Supported Scientists
If you have an interest in forging new or continuing collaborations with European colleagues, this travel grant is for you. Students and postdocs are encouraged to apply.
For additional information regarding EUSTIPEN click here.
Please join me in congratulating two of our members, Professors Dick Furnstahl (The Ohio State University) and Baha Balantekin (University of Wisconsin-Madison) for being awarded the 2025 APS Herman Feshbach and Hans A. Bethe Prizes, respectively.
The Herman Feshbach Prize Herman serves to recognize and encourage outstanding research in theoretical nuclear physics. Professor Furnstahl’s citation reads:
“For foundational contributions to calculations of nuclei, including applying the Similarity Renormalization Group to the nuclear force, grounding nuclear density functional theory in those forces, and using Bayesian methods to quantify the uncertainties in effective field theory predictions of nuclear observables."
The Hans A. Bethe Prize serves to recognize outstanding work in theory, experiment or observation in the areas of astrophysics, nuclear physics, nuclear astrophysics, or closely related fields. Professor Balantekin’s citation reads:
"For seminal contributions to neutrino physics and astrophysics — especially the neutrino flavor transformation problem — both for solar neutrinos and the nonlinear supernova environment."
In addition to doing great physics, Dick and Baha have been very engaged in serving and promoting the needs of the larger nuclear physics community. Both of them were very instrumental to the early success of the FRIB-TA, serving on the Executive Board from 2015-2020.
OHIO's Dr. Christian Drischler was recently recognized with the prestigious NSF CAREER Award for early-career faculty and scientists. Through funding from the award, Drischler will advance the scientific community's understanding of theoretical nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics.
Visit https://www.ohio.edu/news/2024/09/dr-christian-drischler-receives-2024-nsf-career-award-advance-research-educate for additional information.
Assistant Professor of Physics Kevin Fossez is a recipient of a 2023 Faculty Early Career Development Award, or NSF CAREER Award, from the National Science Foundation for his work investigating how to better predict properties of new combinations of protons and neutrons at the limits of nuclear stability.
Dr Christian Drischler, an FRIB theory fellow since 2020 at MSU, has accepted a tenure-track faculty position in the Physics Department of Ohio University, under the FRIB-TA bridge program.
Christian’s research includes applications of chiral effective theory and many-body perturbation theory to nuclear matter equation of state and neutron stars, as well as Bayesian methods and emulators for nuclear scattering and reactions. Congratulations Christian!
"FRIB is a discovery machine. It will enable researchers to investigate what holds together the atomic nuclei were made of and how those elements were created.To understand that, scientists study rare isotopes."
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