Dr. Adriana Banu is an experimental low-energy nuclear physicist. She received her Ph.D. in 2005 from University of Mainz, Germany, on research carried out at GSI Darmstadt to study the structure of exotic nuclei via relativistic Coulomb excitation. Afterwards she moved to the USA as a postdoctoral research associate at the Cyclotron Institute/Texas A&M University. There she carried out research in nuclear astrophysics using rare isotope beams with a focus on cross section measurements for studying reaction rates astrophysically relevant in quiescent and explosive Hydrogen burning in stellar environments such as first stars, novae and X-Ray bursts. Prof. Banu joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy at JMU in fall of 2010. Currently she carries out measurements related to the p-process nucleosynthesis using the world’s most intense quasi monoenergetic gamma-ray beams produced at Duke University’s High-Intensity Gamma-Ray Source (HIGS) facility and the JMU’s Madison Accelerator Laboratory (MAL), where she has been developing a program based on the photoactivation analysis technique. Dr. Banu is also a member of the MoNA collaboration that explores, at the Michigan State University’s Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), the most neutron-rich nuclei that exist. Dr. Banu is currently funded by both the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Nuclear Science Office of the Department of Energy.
Dr. Kevin Giovanetti received his Ph.D. from the College of William and Mary (1982). As a postdoctoral researcher at PSI, Dr. Giovanetti continued his exploration of fundamental physics using atoms composed of exotic particles. This was followed by a second postdoctoral position at UVA where Dr. Giovanetti learned the electron scattering techniques that he currently uses to explore the properties of protons and neutrons at Jefferson
Dr. Ilarion Melnikov studied at Cornell University as an undergraduate and received his Ph.D. in Physics from Duke University. He is a mathematical physicist with main interests in quantum field theory and string theory. The former is a broad framework underlying our understanding of particle physics and a wide variety of many-body phenomena and collective behavior. The latter is an ambitious attempt to describe the fundamental structure of matter and space-time itself. Dr. Melnikov's work uncovers and develops geometric and algebraic structures in quantum field theory and string theory; these structures can often constrain or even exactly determine various physical properties of these systems. Conversely, the physical origins of the mathematical structures can often lead to surprising mathematical insights and unexpected relations.
Dr. Gabriel Niculescu received his Ph.D. from Hampton University. He then moved on to a postdoc position at Jefferson Lab (by way of Ohio University) and then at the University of Virginia. He came to JMU in 2003. Dr. Niculescu is a member of the CLAS collaboration at Jefferson Lab and the Minerva neutrino experiment at Fermi Lab. He is involved in all aspects of designing, simulating, building, and testing detectors for these high energy experiments, as well as analyzing the data.
Dr. Ioana Niculescu received her Ph.D. from Hampton University. She went on to hold a postdoctoral position at Jefferson Lab. Dr. Niculescu joined the faculty of JMU in 2002. She is a member of the CLAS collaboration of Jefferson Lab and also the Minerva neutrino experiment at Fermi Lab. Dr. Niculescu studies quark-hadron duality, that is, being able to describe hadronic processes in terms of quarks and gluons or also in terms of hadrons.
