Sept. 4, 2001
Physics Hosts Research Students
Students Analyze Data from DOE Facilities
For the 15th summer, the GW Experimental Nuclear
Physics Group, led by Professor of Physics Barry L. Berman, has once
again hosted a group of students, mostly from aboard, to conduct nuclear
physics research. These students, both undergraduates and graduates,
spent the summer analyzing nuclear-physics data obtained at the US Department
of Energys Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport
News, VA, and Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Upton, NY.
This years group included two undergraduate students from France,
one from Scotland, and one from New Jersey. Students learn about the
summer program from Berman and by word of mouth from previous participants.
During the summer, Sandrine Spyckerelle and Anne Lafont, undergraduate
students at Ecole Nationale Superieure in Caen, France, analyzed Jefferson
Lab data on deuterium (heavy hydrogen), and were able to identify several
hundred thousand events on an important reaction channel that no one
had looked at before, and which, according to Berman, eventually will
yield very interesting results. Chris Murphy, an undergraduate student
from Glasgow, Scotland, worked in GWs Nuclear Detector Lab (NDL)
using computer simulations to determine how to measure the polarization
of a photon beam and compared his results with those obtained earlier
at BNL. Courtney Konner, an undergraduate student from New Jersey at
the University of Michigan, also worked at GWs NDL repeating and
improving greatly on the analysis of previous research done in England
to find the probability for absorption of high-energy photons on the
neutron.
These students were the guests of President Trachtenberg at a special
lunch at the GW University Club on Aug. 15. GW experimental nuclear
physics graduate students Sal Rodriguez, from Texas; Sasha Philips,
from Sri Lanka; and Aziz Shafi, from Bangladesh, also joined the group.
Rodriguez, who has been at GW only one year and who attended the Hampton
University Graduate School at Jefferson Laboratory this summer, is just
ready to begin his PhD research work. He learned about GWs graduate
program from a physics professor in Texas who previously was a postdoc
and later assistant research professor with Berman at GW. Philips and
Shafi are finishing up their PhD work this year; Philips, whose adviser
is Berman, obtained his thesis data at Jefferson Lab, while Shafi, whose
adviser is GW Professor of Physics William Briscoe, obtained his at
BNL. All three have taught laboratory classes at GW, and both Philips
and Shafi have won the coveted Futterman Prize for Excellence in Teaching
as a Graduate Student.
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu