ISNAP - Key Persons

Mary Beard (1980-2016) came in 2002 as an MPhys student from the University of Surrey to the nuclear physics group at the University of Notre Dame, she has not left us. Her MPhys Master degree was on the topic of pycnonuclear reactions in the deep crust of neutron stars. Despite her love for England and her desire to live and work there, she came to Notre Dame for a PhD, not without branching out first for an excursion to the favelas of Sao Paulo to learn about nuclear potentials from Brazilian reaction theorists. This excursion provided her with an unlimited source of entertaining stories from Brazil. During her PhD she worked with Dima Yakovlev of St. Petersburg, Russia and his student Peter, which complemented her repertoire of stories from the southern hemisphere with a new set of entertaining tales from the cold most northern part of Europe. Mary was a sharp observer of the human condition with amazing incites, enormous patience and nearly infinite tolerance for everyone. She was understanding and full of compassion for people, their strengths as well as their weaknesses. For her PhD project she calculated a large set of pycnonuclear fusion and neutron capture reaction rates and their impact on the ashes of X-ray bursts in neutron star crusts. After her PhD, she held postdoctoral positions with the ExtreMe Matter Institute EMMI at GSI Darmstadt working closely with research groups in Rossendorf and the University of Basel on a number of projects before she returned as a Research Professor to Notre Dame. Mary built a broad international network of collaborations. She was liked by all of them for her wit and humor, as well as her highly sought after scientific expertise. She kept up her scientific work and enthusiasm through the very end, she never despaired, optimistic to leap frog from one type of treatment to another until a cure could be found. She remained full of hope until the very end. Through all these years Mary became the spirit and strength of the nuclear group, she mentored graduate and undergraduate students alike, she was a source of support and ideas for faculty and a friend to all. We miss her and we will keep missing her, but we will never forget her.

Matt Quinn

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Radiation Physics Science Development Manager at Fermilab, Batavia IL

Maxime Brodeur

mb..@nd.edu

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Ortenzio Family Associate Professorship in Applied Medical and Nuclear Physics

Meisel, Zachary

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Assistant Professor

Michael Skulski

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Postdoc at Medical Isotope Research & Production ( MIRP ) Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory

Mike Moran

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Senior Data Scientist at Duo Security

Miriam Matney

mm..@nd.edu

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Advisor

Naqvi, Farheen

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Assistant Professor

Nathan Cooper

Nathan Cooper (1984-2019) joined the Nuclear Science Lab in 2017 as a postdoctoral researcher working on gamma-ray strength functions and spin distribution models for heavy nuclei. He received a Bachelor's degree from in both physics and mathematics from Northern Illinois University and continued his education as a graduate student at Yale University. Under the supervision of Volker Werner, Nathan worked on experimental efforts to extract gamma-ray functions from a variety of experiments. He earned his PhD from Yale in 2015 with a thesis titled "Structure of A = 76 Nuclei and Fast-Timing Studies of the Rare-Earth Region". His thesis was the last of Yale PhD theses to come out of Yale's tandem accelerator at the Wright Nuclear Structure Laboratory. After graduation, he moved to Richmond, VA to join the group of late Prof. Con Beausang, to continue research in nuclear structure. At University of Richmond, Nathan worked on developing computational codes that model the spin distribution of states populated via compound nuclear reactions and that simulate gamma-ray cascades that follow a deexcitation of a compound nucleus. His work focused on providing experimental constraints for the surrogate method for determining neutron capture cross sections. He continued his work at Notre Dame working with Prof. Anna Simon's group. Nathan utilized his codes to the experimental data from the Hyperion array at Texas A&M and provided a novel approach for the analysis that allowed for extraction of the spin distribution from the particle-gamma coincidence data. Alongside with research, Nathan was passionate about science education and outreach. Both at Richmond and at Notre Dame, he was involved in a variety of outreach programs and frequently volunteered as a physics and mathematics tutor.

Nayak, Basanta Kumar

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Senior Scientist / Bhabha Atomic Research Center

Notani, Masahiro

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Research Scientist

O'Malley, Patrick

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Research Assistant Professor / Department of Physics

Olivia Bruce

ob..@nd.edu

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Advisor

Patrick O'Malley

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Research Assistant Professor

Philippe Collon

pc..@nd.edu

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Professor

Qian Liu

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Data Scientist / Developer at Adxeed, Inc., Seattle, WA

Ragnar Stroberg

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Assistant Professor

Rao, P.V. Madhusudhana

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Assistant Professor
Department of Nuclear Physics / Andhra University

Rebecca Detwiller

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Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA

Rebecca Surman

rs..@nd.edu

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Professor

Regan Zite

rz..@nd.edu

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Advisor

Richard "James" deBoer

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Research Associate Professor

Robertson, Daniel

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Research Associate Professor / Department of Physics

Ruchi Rathod

rr..@nd.edu

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Advisor

Ruoyu "Fry" Fang

rf..@nd.edu

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Advisor: Couder

Sanjeevan Naguleswaran

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QSPectral Systems Ltd., Bulimba, Austrialia

Scott Carmichael

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Advisor

Sean McGuinness

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Postdoc at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA

Sergio Almaraz-Calderon

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Assistant Professor, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL

Shane Moylan

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Advisor

Shaofei Zhu

Shaofei Zhu (1969 - 2021) received his PhD in Nuclear Physics from the University of Notre Dame under the guidance of Professor Umesh Garg. His thesis used data taken at ATLAS with Gammasphere at Argonne National Laboratory. After receiving his degree, Shaofei joined Argonne as a post-doc within PHY, and he worked closely with the nuclear structure group. For his second post-doc, he worked with Filip Kondev here at ANL, performing nuclear data evaluations. At the completion of this post-doc term, he accepted a staff position within PHY as ATLAS User Liaison Physicist. He excelled in this position redefining its responsibilities of providing strong support to Users as they planned and executed their experiments at ATLAS. In addition, he continued to play a key role in the upkeep of the Gammasphere spectrometer. Furthermore, he served as scientific project manager for the GRETINA spectrometer when it was sited at ATLAS for its first and second experimental campaigns. Shaofei recently left the Laboratory to take on a new role with the National Nuclear Data Center at Brookhaven National Laboratory where his expertise in nuclear structure and experimental nuclear physics was an asset in his new responsibilities. Shaofei was a well-respected and talented scientist. He co-authored nearly 400 peer-reviewed articles. He not only touched the lives of members of the Division, but he also had an enormous impact on the entire ATLAS community. Shaofei provided remarkable assistance to researchers coming from every corner of the world. While he was no longer a PHY staff member, Shaofei continued to collaborate with scientists of the Division. In fact, Shaofei was currently serving on the ATLAS User Executive Committee and recently just finished taking data on 241Am decay with Gammasphere to address open questions regarding nuclear data evaluations. Shaofei passed away unexpectedly on Monday, November 1 at his home. He is survived by his wife Xiangbin and his two children Cindy and Sean.