PHYSICS - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Provost
- Provost and Professor
Aaron Dominguez is the provost and an ordinary professor of physics at The Catholic University of America. His main area of research is in using particle colliders to search for new physics, including the recently discovered Higgs boson. His area of expertise is in instrumentation - designing, building and using silicon charged particle trackers as precision tools to reconstruct the complicated interactions taking place in these collisions.
He received his undergraduate degrees from Whitman College and Caltech, his Ph.D. in physics from UC San Diego and was a postdoctoral researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 2005, he was the recipient of the NSF CAREER award. He has played numerous leadership positions in the L3, CDF and CMS particle physics experiments at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland and Fermilab in Chicago. Specifically, he is currently deputy project leader for the upgrades of CMS, and is the principal investigator of an NSF project that is funding the U.S. efforts of nine universities to improve the silicon pixel detector, hadron calorimeter and trigger in preparation for high luminosity runs of the LHC in coming years. He has mentored seven postdoctoral researchers, three graduate students to completion, three currently in progress, and numerous undergraduates. He sits on several advisory boards, including QuarkNet, and is an author on more than 1,100 papers in experimental high energy physics and instrumentation.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Research Scientist
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Scientist
Job Titles:
- Research Assistant Professor
Dr. Gioia Rau joined Catholic University of America in November 2017, working at Goddard Space Flight Center in the Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics lab.
Dr. Rau studies the atmospheres of cool, giant stars, focusing on their chromospheric and atmospheric activity. She does so combining high-spectral resolution space-based Hubble Space Telescope data, with high-angular resolution ground-based interferometric data from observatories such as CHARA, ESO's VLTI, and ALMA. She has been awarded several observing proposals as PI and Co-I.
Before that, in 2017 she was a visiting research scientist at ESO/Garching (Germany), after completing her PhD in Vienna (Austria, 2012-2016) on the study of Atmospheres of carbon-rich Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars, which received the prestigious fellowship grant "Abschlussstipendium, Universität Wien".
She received her Master degree with honors (cum laude) at La Sapienza University in 2011. In the final year of her Master she was awarded, for being 1 of the 4 students among the whole Science faculty (including Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology) having the highest-grade point average, the prestigious "Master Thesis' fellowship abroad". Thanks to this she developed her Master Thesis at NASA/JPL-CalTech.
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Scientist
- Research Associate Professor
Dr. Martin Cordiner joined the Physics Department at Catholic University of America in March 2009. He works full-time on scientific research in astrochemistry and planetary science at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, in the Astrochemistry Laboratory.
He studied for a Master in Science (Physics) degree at Bristol University (UK) in 2001 and obtained his PhD in astrochemistry from The University of Nottingham (UK) in 2006. His research aims to understand the chemical conditions responsible for the origin of chemical complexity, including life in the universe.
Robert Robinson, CUA, Director. Dr. Robinson is the PI for the CEPHEUS cooperative agreement. As a Program Director at NSF, he managed a portfolio of cooperative agreements for the management and operation of the U. S. network of incoherent scatter radars and was the disciplinary technical coordinator for the Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling (CISM).
Dr. Robinson's career spans more than four decades of scientific research and management. Since receiving his PhD in Space Physics at Rice University, he has held positions in industry, government and academia, including 22 years as a Program Officer at the U. S. National Science Foundation, where he managed a portfolio of cooperative agreements for the operation of the U. S. network of incoherent scatter radars, and was the disciplinary technical coordinator for the Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling. As a Research Professor at Catholic University, Dr. Robinson is currently the Principal Investigator of the six-institution Partnership for Heliophysics and Space Environment Research (PHaSER), a cooperative agreement from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center supporting 130 scientists at Goddard's Heliophysics Science Division. He continues his research as a member of the Geospace Dynamics Constellation Internal Science Team.
Robinson, R. M. and R. R. Vondrak, Validation of techniques for space based remote sensing of auroral precipitation and its ionospheric effects, Space Science Reviews, 69, 331, 1994.
Job Titles:
- Department
- Research Associate Professor
Dr. Shin-Shan Yu received her B.S. degree from National Taiwan University and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. She subsequently worked as a research associate at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory before joining the National Central University (NCU) in Taiwan as an assistant professor in 2009. She was promoted to associate professor in 2013 and full professor in 2018. In 2024, Dr. Yu joined the Catholic University of America as a research associate professor. Dr. Yu has been recognized with numerous prestigious awards, including the Wu Ta-You Memorial Award in 2013, the Excellent Young Scholars Award in 2021 from Taiwan's Ministry of Science and Technology (now the National Science and Technology Council), and the Taiwan Outstanding Junior Female Scientist Award in 2017 from the Chien-Shiung Wu Foundation. Her outstanding contributions to data quality monitoring and data certification in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) Experiment earned her the CMS Award in 2024. Additionally, Dr. Yu received the Outstanding Research Awards from 2015 to 2017 and the Chia-Lun Luo Award for Outstanding Junior Research Investigators in 2018 at NCU. She was also appointed as a Distinguished Professor at NCU from 2019 to 2021.
Research Interests
As a UPenn Ph.D. student and a Fermilab research associate, Dr. Shin-Shan Yu was an active member of the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) Collaboration. She constructed, commissioned, and maintained the operation of CDF central outer tracker (COT) and its frontend electronics. She played a pivotal role in the study of the lightest beauty baryon, Lambda_b, and in searches for new physics involving photons. Since 2009, She has been a dedicated member of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) Collaboration. Her research focuses on advancing the understanding of photon and jet production in colliders, searching for dark matter particles, and investigating new physics through events involving photons or Higgs bosons. From 2022 to 2024, she was significantly involved in the CMS experiment's operations and served as a Level-2 convener for the Physics Performance and Dataset (PPD) Data Quality Monitoring and Data Certification (DQM-DC) group. She is also actively involved in the research and development programs for calorimeters designed for future circular colliders. Beyond collider physics, Dr. Yu established the Taiwan Axion Search Experiment with a Haloscope (TASEH) in collaboration with several professors in Taiwan, aiming to detect the axion, a leading dark matter candidate.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor in Physics at George Mason University
Erdal Yiğit, GMU, Faculty Liaison. Dr. Yiğit is an associate professor in physics at George Mason University. He was a recipient of the 2016 Zeldovich Medal jointly presented by COSPAR and the Russian Academy of Sciences and has led the organization of multiple international workshops. He is currently a vice-chair of COSPAR's commission C.
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Scientist
Job Titles:
- Postdoctoral Research Associate
Job Titles:
- Research Associate Professor
Job Titles:
- Director of Goddard Planetary Heliophysics Institute
Jan Merka, UMBC, Associate Director and Faculty Liaison. Dr. Merka is the Director of Goddard Planetary Heliophysics Institute and an Associate Research Scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He has 10 years of experience leading the GPHI cooperative agreement, where his research focuses on solar wind and magnetospheric studies combining spacecraft observations with models.
Job Titles:
- Deputy Director
- Its Deputy Director
Jeffrey W. Brosius, CUA, Deputy Director. Dr. Brosius is the deputy PI for the CEPHEUS cooperative agreement. He has been working in the Solar Physics Laboratory at GSFC since 1985, where he has been PI on NASA and NSF grants, a Co-I on SERTS, AIA, and EUNIS, has coordinated numerous observing campaigns, and was a frequent planner of CDS science operations. He has mentored DC public school teachers and chaired the SPD Popular Writing Awards committee.
Job Titles:
- Professor in Solar Physics Who Has Been at GMU
Jie Zhang, GMU, Associate Director and Faculty Liaison. Dr. Zhang is a full professor in solar physics who has been at GMU for 20 years. He is the associate chair of research in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at GMU and is one of the co-founders of the space weather and heliospheric physics research and education program at GMU that started in 2003. He has co-directed graduate students and postdocs with HSD scientists.
Job Titles:
- Professor and Department Chair
Job Titles:
- Director of USRA 's Science
Linda Parker, USRA, Associate Director. Dr. Parker is Director of USRA's Science and Technology Institute and manages a cooperative agreement in Heliophysics, Astrophysics, and Earth Science supporting the Marshall Space Flight Center Science and Technology Department. She is also the Deputy for Space Weather and Spacecraft Charging to the NASA Space Environments Technical Fellow.
Marcus Alfred, HU, Associate Director. Dr. Alfred is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Howard University. Dr. Alfred along with several other Howard faculty have led a successful effort to strengthen Space Science at Howard University and to develop closer ties with NASA GSFC. Dr. Alfred is also the Associate Director at HU for CRESST II.
Job Titles:
- Director of the Earth & Space Research Administration at UMBC
Margo Young, UMBC, Administration and Finance Director. Ms. Young is the Director of the Earth & Space Research Administration at UMBC. Ms. Young brings over 14 years experience managing cooperative agreements at GSFC and a history of 27 years managing dynamic teams.
Job Titles:
- Research Associate Professor
Job Titles:
- Postdoctoral Research Associate
Job Titles:
- Associate Director of Goddard Planetary Heliophysics Institute
Job Titles:
- Assistant
- Research Scientist
Job Titles:
- Research Associate Professor
Robert Weigel, GMU, Faculty Liaison. Dr. Weigel is an associate professor who has been at GMU for 14 years. He has served as the PI of multiple sub-contracts from CUA through CEPHEUS and co-directed graduate students and postdocs with GSFC scientists. He is or has been the PI of 11 research grants from NASA and NSF.
Job Titles:
- Assistant
- Research Scientist
Job Titles:
- Director of Institute for Astrophysics and Computational Sciences
- Member of the American Astronomical Society
- Professor and Director of IACS
Education
Ph.D., Astronomy, University of Maryland
Steve Kraemer is the only member of the American Astronomical Society to get a mention in Christiane Bird's "Guide to Live Jazz and Blues in the U.S."
Job Titles:
- Research Associate Professor