The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams is pleased to open nominations for the 2025 FRIB Achievement Award for Early Career Researchers. The awards are intended to recognize one outstanding experimentalist and one outstanding theorist in nuclear science, no more than six years past their PhD award date at the time of the nomination deadline, who have made a significant contribution toward FRIB science. This contribution need not directly involve a FRIB experiment. Awardees will receive a plaque with the awardee's name and institution and $3,000 travel support to attend the annual Low Energy Community Meeting (LECM). This year the LECM will be held at Texas A&M University from August 13 - 15 and awardees will deliver a plenary talk on their work.
Nominations, due by 11PM ET on Friday, March 28th, 2025, require three letters of support (one of which should be the nominator’s), a one-page summary from the nominee of the contribution and impact of their work on FRIB science, CV, and copies of up to three related publications. Self-nominations will not be accepted.
After submitting the nomination form, supporting documents i.e. the letters, summary, CV and preprints must be emailed as one full submission by the primary nominator to the FRIB UOEC Secretary, Wei Jia Ong {ong10 AT llnl DOT gov (ong10@llnl.gov)} by Friday, March 28, 2025. The subject line of the email should read “FRIB early career award 2025” “Nominee’s full name” “either THEORY or EXPERIMENT”. The primary nominator must also complete form, found here.
Please check the attached document for full details of the award, eligibility, selection criterion and procedure.
Questions regarding the nomination process may be directed to the chair of FRIBUOEC Andrea Richard (richarda1 AT ohio DOT edu (richarda1@ohio.edu)).
Thank you,
Wei Jia Ong (LLNL), Secretary of the FRIB Users Organization Executive Committee
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.
"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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