The 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was awarded to four major research collaborations including the ALICE experiment in which NSD has maintained a longstanding and prominent role. Researchers in NSD’s Relativistic Nuclear Collisions program currently lead various studies, analysis efforts, and publications focused on QGP and the emerging phenomena in quantum chromodynamics (QCD), including experiments on jet quenching and ultraperipheral heavy-ion collisions. Further details on the award can be found in this article.
Julian Kahlbow, Staff Scientist in NSD’s Low Energy Nuclear Physics program, was announced as a recipient of the 2025 Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) Visiting Scholar Program for Experimental Science. As part of this award, Julian plans to work with the Modular Neutron Array (MoNA) collaboration to develop an experimental program to characterize neutron correlations in neutron-rich nuclei, and to advance microscopic understanding of neutron star matter. Additional details can be found here.
Erich Leistenschneider, Staff Scientist in the Low Energy Nuclear Physics program was named as the winner of the 2025 FRIB Achievement Award for Early Career Researchers in the Experimental category for his innovative work on precision spectroscopy and techniques at FRIB. The FRIB Achievement Award for Early Career Researchers was established to recognize outstanding original contributions to the field of nuclear physics through work at or relating to FRIB, performed by scientists early in their careers. Erich will present his work during the plenary session at the Low Energy Community Meeting and receive a stipend to support his participation in the event.
Heather Crawford, a Sr. Scientist who is also with the Low Energy Nuclear Physics program, was elected to the DNP Executive Committee where she will serve a two-year term.
The ACTS Tracking for Nuclear Physics (ACTS4NP) workshop was held at LBNL from May 12-15, 2025. More than 30 in-person participants met to discuss the applications and developments of the ACTS software for charged particle tracking at various detector settings. Participants include the ACTS core developers from CERN, IJCLab, LBNL/UCB, and Stanford, as well as users from various experiment collaborations including EIC, sPHENIX, PIONEER, LDMX, and SoLID and TDIS at Jefferson Lab. The workshop also offered tutorials and hands-on sessions, and a mini-symposium on AI/ML and GPU-based tracking. The event was organized by Shujie Li, Research Scientist in the Relativistic Nuclear Collisions program, and was supported by the France-Berkeley Fund.
The Nuclear Science Division launched its new website – https://nuclearscience.lbl.gov/. The updated site includes revamped outward-facing content on NSD’s science, facilities, and people, along with internal pages that host policies and other important resources. The website also features the latest NSD news, and an archive of newsletters. The development and roll-out of the new website was led by NSD Division Deputy for Operations Tom Gallant.
NSD welcomes new hires Osvaldo Santos (Postdoc, Low Energy Nuclear Physics program), Matthew Bishop (Postdoc, Low Energy Nuclear Physics program), Krystal Alfonso (Postdoc, Neutrinos program), and Jaewon Lee (Sr. Scientific Engineering Associate, Applied Nuclear Physics program).
