Recent months have been a whirlwind with groups across the Nuclear Science Division and the whole Lab engaging with our numerous partners throughout the community to develop proposals in response to the Genesis Mission RFA. It is impressive to see the excellent ideas being put forward. These are building on years of development and application of AI/ML techniques across the Nuclear Science Division. This issue of the Nuclear Science Division newsletter features an excellent example, describing how machine learning methods can significantly speed up the analysis of radiation maps while also providing uncertainty estimates. Overall, the Division and Berkeley Lab more broadly are very well positioned to support the ambitions of the Genesis Mission by building on our strengths: our people, our capabilities, and our partnerships.
In the meantime, we have also continued to advance Nuclear Science in its many facets across our broad portfolio, including a recent Physical Review Letters Editor’s Choice on Lattice QCD results for parton distribution functions of the pion. This newsletter issue features several other excellent examples. We learn about the physics behind the small angle energy-energy correlators in hadronic collisions and their connection to how partons split and hadronize in collider events. This issue also features two stories related to the origin and nature of the heavy elements. This includes a discussion of a recently identified missing pathway for the production of the heavy elements in stellar environments – the so-called intermediate (i-)process. The second article discusses how the chemical properties of the superheavy elements give us an unsolved puzzle on where to place them on the Periodic Table of Elements and how the 88-Inch Cyclotron can be a key to solving this mystery.
Team members across the Division are preparing presentations, posters, and the logistics for our upcoming Director’s Review of the whole Division (May 27-29). This is a great opportunity to showcase all of the fantastic scientific work and technology innovation that is happening in the Division. I am looking forward to welcoming the esteemed reviewers to the lab and to the inspiring presentations and posters from all programs. A big thank you to everyone for the tremendous effort in preparing for this important review.
In this context, it is important to remind ourselves of the responsibilities we have to the Lab, the community, our colleagues, and ourselves, as we articulated in our NSD Community Agreement and the work done by the PSA Stewardship & Workplace Life Council. The article on work-life boundaries in this newsletter issue is very timely in this context.
