DOE's Jefferson Lab has hired Tisca Dorsey as a Director of Business and Finance. In this role, she will be primarily responsible for the development and implementation of the lab’s contracting approach and strategy. She took on this role Feb. 16.
Since it first went online more than 30 years ago, the Vertical Test Area at the U.S. Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has gotten used to superlatives. One of the biggest testbeds of its kind. The busiest. The most versatile.Now, the Vertical Test Area that was created to help build Jefferson Lab’s main particle accelerator has hit another milestone: In 2022, it conducted a mind-boggling 470 different superconducting radiofrequency accelerator cavity tests. In the rarified world of accelerators, that’s an Olympic-level achievement.
Jefferson Lab has appointed Gail Frayne as its new Chief Financial Officer. As CFO, Frayne is responsible for the development and implementation of Jefferson Lab’s financial strategy. She took on these new responsibilities Feb. 1.
Mexican-born physicist Carlos Hernandez-Garcia has been honored by the Mexican Community of Particle Accelerators with an inaugural award for outstanding contributions to Mexico’s particle accelerator community. The award was established and has been named in his honor.
Efforts to harness the power of supercomputers to better understand the hidden worlds inside the nucleus of the atom recently received a big boost. A project led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility is one of three to split $35 million in grants from the DOE via a partnership program of DOE’s Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC). The $13 million project includes key scientists based at six DOE national labs and two universities, including Jefferson Lab, Argonne National Lab, Brookhaven National Lab, Oak Ridge National Lab, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Los Alamos National Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and William & Mary.
After an extensive international search, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has appointed Mark Jones as the new group leader of the lab’s Experimental Halls A and C. He began his tenure Nov. 1.
Computers help physicists solve complicated calculations. But some of these calculations are so complex, a regular computer is not enough. In fact, some advanced calculations tax even the largest supercomputers. Now, scientists at Jefferson Lab and William & Mary have developed MemHC, a new tool that uses memory optimization methods to allow GPU-based computers to calculate the structures of neutrons and protons ten times faster.
A new precision measurement of the proton’s electric polarizability performed at Jefferson Lab has confirmed an unexplained bump in the data. The proton’s electric polarizability shows how susceptible the proton is to deformation, or stretching, in an electric field. Like size or charge, the electric polarizability is a fundamental property of proton structure. The data bump was widely thought to be a fluke when seen in earlier measurements, so this new, more precise measurement confirms the presence of the anomaly and signals that an unknown facet of the strong force may be at work. The research has just been published in the journal Nature.
Scientists have begun turning to new tools offered by machine learning to help save time and money. In the past several years, nuclear physics has seen a flurry of machine learning projects come online, with many papers published on the subject. Now, 18 authors from 11 institutions summarize this explosion of artificial intelligence-aided work in “Machine Learning in Nuclear Physics,” a paper recently published in Reviews of Modern Physics.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has appointed Patrick Carsten Achenbach as the new leader of Jefferson Lab’s Experimental Hall B. The appointment comes after an international search.
The protons and neutrons that build the nucleus of the atom frequently pair up. Now, a new high-precision experiment conducted at Jefferson Lab has found that these particles may pick different partners depending on how packed the nucleus is. The data also reveal new details about short-distance interactions between protons and neutrons in nuclei and may impact results from experiments seeking to tease out further details of nuclear structure.
What happens when a unique research machine breaks? The question isn’t academic. In April, sensors showed that a vacuum seal in Jefferson Lab's Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility had failed in a critical area of the injector – the chopper – where electrons are sorted by large copper cavities and directed for experiments. Without that vacuum seal, outside air we breathe will enter those cavities, contaminating the system and effectively crippling accelerator operations. An ad hoc team of experts from the accelerator and engineering divisions assembled to diagnose the situation and figure out how to fix it.
Take a break for lunch and nourish your brain with the latest in scientific discussions, presented by experts at Jefferson Lab. The second season of the lab’s summer series, Bite-Size Science, is now underway. The Bite-Size Science lunchtime lecture series features half-hour, live-streamed presentations on lab-related science, engineering and technology topics and presented by leaders in their fields. The presentations are tailored to non-scientists and are brief, free, and feature a chat feature for Q&A with the presenters.
Researchers have experimentally extracted the strength of the strong force, a quantity that firmly supports theories explaining how most of the mass or ordinary matter in the universe is generated. This quantity, known as the coupling of the strong force, describes how strongly two bodies interact or “couple” under this force. With Jefferson Lab data, the physicists were able to determine the strong force coupling at the largest distances yet.
The 2022 JSA Postdoctoral Prize winner, Arkaitz Rodas, characterizes lesser-known particles to help physicists understand what holds matter together. Rodas will characterize light mesons using computational mathematical tools for his prize-winning project.
How big is an atomic nucleus? How does the size of a nucleus relate to a neutron star? These tantalizing questions in physics were explored in a pair of experiments at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. Now, a 2021 doctoral dissertation describing those experiments has just earned Devi Lal Adhikari the prestigious annual Jefferson Science Associates (JSA) Thesis Prize.
Alexander Austregesilo, a staff scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, has been awarded a research grant by the DOE Office of Science’s Early Career Research Program. He is one of 83 early career scientists awarded nationwide for the grant, which averages $2.5 million over five years.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has appointed Johnathon Huff as its Chief Operating Officer (COO). The COO is responsible for the business functions of Jefferson Lab, including business and finance, health and safety, human resources, procurement, facilities management, communications, legal and performance assurance. Huff will take on the responsibilities of this role in mid-June.
Two graduate students at Virginia universities who plan to conduct research at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility have just received grants toward their projects. They are among 80 graduate students representing 27 states selected to receive support through the Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program’s 2021 Solicitation 2 cycle.
The director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, Stuart Henderson, has just been named to the 2022 Hampton Roads Power List by Inside Business. According to the article, the list showcases “who’s who in terms of moving the needle for the economy in Hampton Roads, whether they be the decision-makers, the influencers and even some working behind the scenes.” This is Jefferson Lab Director Stuart Henderson’s fourth appearance on the list.