Department of Energy

The Kent State University Department of Physics is proud to welcome our newest faculty member, Dr. Zhangbu Xu.

Dr. Michael Strickland's group will participate in a new Topical Theory Collaboration funded by DOE’s Office of Nuclear Physics to explore the behavior of heavy flavor particles. The collaboration will receive $2.5 Million from the DOE Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics, over five years. That funding will provide partial support for six graduate students and three postdoctoral fellows at 10 institutions, as well as a senior staff position at one of the national laboratories. It will also establish a bridge junior faculty position at Kent State University.

Up until approximately 10^(-5) seconds after the Big Bang, the Universe was is a primordial state of matter called a quark-gluon plasma (QGP).  This is due to the fact that the early Universe was extremely hot and in such a hot environment normal matter, e.g., atoms, atomic nuclei, and even neutrons and protons, did not exist.

The Heavy Flavor Tracker at the center of the STAR detector. BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY/FLICKR

Edwin Duckworth, a physics doctoral student in the College of Arts and Sciences at Kent State University, is among 65 students from 29 states recently selected for funding by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program. The program aspires to “address societal challenges at national and international scale.”

Chelsea Smith (left) and Jordyn Stoll (right) were selected for a Department of Energy Graduate Student Research Program

Two Kent State University students, in the College of Arts and Sciences, were among 62 students from 50 different U.S. universities recently selected for funding by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Program.