Announcement of the winners of the 2025 FRIB Achievement Award for Early Career Researchers

The FRIB Users Organization Executive Committee and FRIB Theory Alliance Executive Board are pleased to announce the winners of the 2025 FRIB Achievement Award for Early Career Researchers.

The 2025 recipient for the Experimental Award is Dr. Erich Leistenschneider, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, for their innovative work on precision spectroscopy and techniques at FRIB.

The 2025 Theory Award recipient is Dr. Cole Pruitt, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for their pioneering work on uncertainty quantified optical models.

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!
Andrea Richard and Calvin Johnson
on behalf of the FRIBUOEC and FRIBTAEB

FRIB theory alliance bridge position at U of AZ

Dr. Pooja Siwach, currently a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has accepted a FRIB Theory Bridge faculty position in the Department of Physics at the University of Arizona. Her research lies at the intersection of nuclear structure, neutrino physics, and quantum computing. Congratulations, Pooja!

FRIB Theory Alliance EUSTIPEN Program
EUSTIPEN Mission: The Europe-U.S. Theory Institute for Physics with Exotic Nuclei (EUSTIPEN) has been established in order to facilitate collaborations between U.S.-based and Europe-based scientists whose main research thrust is in the area of the physics of nuclei. U.S. participation in EUSTIPEN is in the form of travel grants and subsistence grants to ECT* in Trento to those individuals who are interested in collaborating with European scientists. EUSTIPEN’s purview is in the area of physics of or with exotic nuclei, including nuclear structure and reaction theory, nuclear astrophysics, and tests of the standard model using exotic nuclei. Funding for EUSTIPEN is being provided through the FRIB Theory Alliance by the Office of Nuclear Physics of the U. S. Department of Energy.

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.

FRIB-TA Theory Fellow Chien-Yeah Seng accepted a postion at UTK

Dr. Chien-Yeah Seng, former FRIB Theory Alliance fellow accepted a postion at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville as an Assistant Professor. Visit https://physics.utk.edu/people/instructional-faculty/seng-chien-yeah/ for additional information.

2025 APS Herman Feshbach and Hans A. Bethe Prize winners

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.

FRIB-TA Bridge Faculty member Dr. Christian Drischler receives prestigious 2024 NSF CAREER Award

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.

Our mission

Foster advancements in theory related to diverse areas of FRIB science

"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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