By Andrea Gibson
contributing writer
Ohio University physicist Daniel Phillips has been named an Outstanding Junior Investigator in nuclear physics by the U.S. Department of Energy, one of only five scientists in the nation to receive the honor.
This DOE program supports the development of individual research programs of outstanding scientists early in their careers. Recipients are tenure-track faculty currently involved in experimental or theoretical nuclear physics studies.
Phillips, 30, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences, received a three-year, $183,000 grant to support his work. The award will help him develop new theories about the forces at work between particles of matter in the universe. Phillips will use the funds to purchase computer equipment, hire graduate students and postdoctoral researchers and to travel to collaborating institutions.
"This is an ideas-driven subject, and I want to recruit smart graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to share ideas," he said.
A theoretical physicist, Phillips calculates how the force between neutrons and protons, the particles that live inside the atomic nucleus, might behave. Scientists test such theories in the lab.
Physicists at the DOE's Jefferson Laboratory in Virginia, for example, recently tested a theory developed by Phillips and other scientists by firing a beam of electrons at a target of neutrons and protons.
"It's exciting when you're right," Phillips said.
Learning more about the force between neutrons and protons aids scientists' understanding of certain phenomena in the universe. These include supernovae, which are the explosions of large stars, and neutron stars, which are celestial objects composed of densely packed neutrons. It also could provide clues about the beginnings of the cosmos. In addition, the U.S. government can apply such basic scientific information to understand the forces at work in nuclear explosions.
Phillips grew up in Adelaide, Australia, and received undergraduate and graduate degrees in theoretical physics from Flinders University of South Australia. He served as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Maryland at College Park and as a research assistant professor at the University of Washington in Seattle before joining Ohio University in August 2000.
The four other recipients of the Outstanding Junior Investigator award this year are scientists at Purdue University, Florida State University, North Carolina State University and the State University at New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook. For more information on the DOE program, go to www.sc.doe.gov/production/henp/np/program/oji.html.
