• share
• favorite_border

Elementary and middle school teachers are invited to register now to participate in the annual Virginia Region II Teacher Night hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility on April 14, 2021. The fully virtual event will allow educators to see demonstrations of new methods for teaching physical science concepts and safely meet and interact with their colleagues, all while they pick up one recertification point from the comfort of their own homes. Advance registration is required, and the event is open to all upper elementary and middle school teachers of physical science.

• share
• favorite_border

While protons populate the nucleus of every atom in the universe, sometimes they can be squeezed into a smaller size and slip out of the nucleus for a romp on their own. Observing these squeezed protons may offer unique insights into the particles that build our universe. Now, researchers hunting for these squeezed protons have come up empty-handed, suggesting there’s more to the phenomenon than first thought. The result was recently published in Physical Review Letters.

• share
• favorite_border

In honor of Hermann Grunder, the founding director of Jefferson Lab, and his contributions to accelerator science, the lab recently established the Hermann Grunder Postdoctoral Fellowship in Accelerator Science. Now, the first Hermann Grunder fellow, John Vennekate, has started work. He said he hopes to follow in the footsteps of his fellowship’s namesake to continue blazing a new trail for practical applications of superconducting accelerators.

• share
• favorite_border

A major injector upgrade at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility was well underway early last year when the pandemic hit, throwing scientists and their long-anticipated project for a loop. Literally overnight, they had to leave their desks, control room and colleagues behind and rapidly learn how to work together from the confines of their own homes.

• share
• favorite_border

Artificial intelligence is a game-changer in nuclear physics, able to enhance and accelerate fundamental research and analysis by orders of magnitude. DOE's Jefferson Lab is exploring the expanding synergy between nuclear physics and computer science as it co-hosts together with The Catholic University of America and the University of Maryland a virtual weeklong series of lectures and hands-on exercises Jan. 11-15 for graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and even “absolute beginners.”

• share
• favorite_border

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned workplaces everywhere upside down, prompting countless brainstorming sessions on how to make work environments safer or whether jobs might be done just as well from home. Jefferson Lab technical designer Mindy Leffel says working from home during the pandemic has been a learning process, but has only motivated her to prove herself.

• share
• favorite_border

Operators of Jefferson Lab's primary particle accelerator are getting a new tool to help them quickly address issues that can prevent it from running smoothly. The machine learning system has passed its first two-week test, correctly identifying glitchy accelerator components and the type of glitches they’re experiencing in near-real-time. An analysis of the results of the first field test of the custom-built machine learning system was recently published in the journal Physical Review Accelerators and Beams.

• share
• favorite_border

The MOLLER experiment at DOE’s Jefferson Lab is one step closer to carrying out an experiment to gain new insight into the forces at work inside the heart of matter through probes of the humble electron. The experiment has just received a designation of Critical Decision 1, or CD-1, from the DOE, which is a greenlight to move forward in design and prototyping of equipment.

• share
• favorite_border

Some of the most advanced work to enable research at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility is focused on ensuring that nothing gets in the way of the electron beam produced for nuclear physics experiments. Now, one Jefferson Lab staff scientist is being honored for her work on producing ultra-high to extreme-high vacuum environments to do just that.

• share
• favorite_border

Jefferson Science Associates has announced the award of ten graduate fellowships to doctoral students for the 2020-2021 academic year. The fellowships will support students’ advanced studies at their universities and research at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, a U.S. Department of Energy nuclear physics research laboratory managed and operated by JSA.

• share
• favorite_border

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has shipped the final new section of accelerator that it has built for an upgrade of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). The section of accelerator, called a cryomodule, has begun a cross-country road trip to DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, where it will be installed in LCLS-II, the world’s brightest X-ray laser.

• share
• favorite_border

A graduate student who will work with theorists at Jefferson Lab to better understand subatomic particles has received a supplemental research award from the DOE Office of Science Graduate Student Research Program.

• share
• favorite_border

Five researchers who are affiliated with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility have been selected by their professional peers for the distinct honor of Fellow of the American Physical Society.

• share
• favorite_border

Two physicists at DOE's Jefferson Lab have secured $2.16 million in funding for projects that harness the power of data analytics to make the work of studying the universe down to its smallest subatomic parts faster and more efficient.

• share
• favorite_border

Hadrons are elusive superstars of the subatomic world, making up almost all visible matter, and British theoretical physicist Antoni Woss has worked diligently with colleagues at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility to get to know them better. Now, Woss’ doctoral thesis on spinning hadrons has earned him the 2019 Jefferson Science Associates Thesis Prize.

• share
• favorite_border

Bob May’s career-long aspiration has been to keep people from all walks of life and in different work environments safe from radiation in the workplace. Now, the deputy director of Environment, Safety and Health at the U.S. Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has been honored for his dedication to the field by being named a fellow of the Health Physics Society.

• share
• favorite_border

Cynthia Keppel has been named a DOE Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellow. Based at DOE’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, she is one of three DOE National Laboratory scientist fellows who will receive $1 million to devote to developing better detectors for science and medicine.

• share
• favorite_border

Wenliang “Bill” Li won the 2020 JSA Postdoctoral Prize to run experiments that will examine proton structure from a lesser-studied perspective. A postdoctoral researcher at William & Mary, Li is studying proton structure just like many people who conduct their nuclear physics research at Jefferson Lab. But he’s studying a new aspect of it: the backward perspective.

• share
• favorite_border

Dien Nguyen (Zee-en Wen) studies some of the smallest units of matter on Earth to learn more about massive objects in space. Now, she’ll be conducting her research as the Nathan Isgur Postdoctoral Fellow in Nuclear Experiment at the Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility.

• share
• favorite_border

Nuclear physicists have announced the most precise measurement yet of the ultra-short lifetime of the neutral pion. The result is an important validation of our understanding of the theory of quantum chromodynamics, which describes the makeup of ordinary matter. The research, carried out at the Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, was recently published in the journal Science.