PHYSICS RESEARCHERS RECEIVE FEDERAL GRANT

The Experimental Nuclear Physics Research Group at Old Dominion University has been awarded a $1.6 million grant by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The three-year grant was announced in mid-February and is 15 percent larger than the group's previous grant, a remarkable achievement in times when most researchers find their budgets being cut, said Colm Whelan, chair of Old Dominion's Department of Physics since July.

The increase recognizes the group's accomplishments in providing state-of-the-art detection equipment for the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News and for leading many of the international scientific collaborations doing research there.

"This is a terrific tribute to our quality faculty in Nuclear Physics and to Colm's leadership," said Thomas Isenhour, Dean of Old Dominion's College of Sciences.

The study, entitled "From Quarks to Nuclei," probes the "strong force" which binds quarks together to form protons and neutrons and holds them together in atomic nuclei.

The Old Dominion group works primarily at Jefferson Lab, using electrons travelling at almost the speed of light as a microscope to study quantum quark waves inside the nucleus at a resolution 1 million times finer than the size of the atom.

As the quark and associated gluon waves are responsible for nearly all the visible matter and energy in the universe, such information is of vital importance to science.

"They're going deep into the heart of matter," Whelan said.

The Experimental Nuclear Physics Group is currently led by principal investigator Larry Weinstein, professor of physics at Old Dominion; and co-principal investigators Gail Dodge, Charles Hyde-Wright, Andi Klein, Sebastian Kuhn and Paul Ulmer, all Old Dominion faculty members.

The grant also supports doctoral and graduate researchers and provides cutting edge research opportunities for undergraduates.