Meet the Speakers

Alexandra Semposki 

Ohio University

Alexandra is a PhD candidate studying theoretical nuclear physics with Prof. Daniel R. Phillips at Ohio University, defending in July 2025. She is a member of the Bayesian Analysis of Nuclear Dynamics (BAND) collaboration.  Her research focus has been on applications of Bayesian model mixing to nuclear physics, specifically the equation of state of dense matter. She has employed model-extrusive emulators to perform model mixing, as well as to speed up calculations of neutron star properties. Future research interests include many-body physics and chiral effective field theory. In September 2025, she will be joining Technische Universität Darmstadt as a Herzberg Fellow in Prof. Achim Schwenk's research group.

Dr. Rahul Jain

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Rahul is an experimental nuclear physicist currently working as a postdoc at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). He is working on indirect neutron capture cross-section measurements for various applications. Prior to LLNL, he received a PhD from Michigan State University while working at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams on beta-decay experiments for nuclear astrophysics. During grad school, he also served as the graduate students’ representative on the IReNA Steering Committee.

Finia Jost

Technische Universität Darmstadt

Finia is a PhD candidate at Technische Universität Darmstadt (TU Darmstadt) in Prof. Almudena Arcones's group working on simulations of core-collapse supernovae. See her recent publication 'Neutrino-driven core-collapse supernova yields in Galactic chemical evolution' here. She previously completed her Master's degree at TU Darmstadt, where she studied “Core-Collapse Supernova Simulations with Aenus-Alcar: Heating Factor and Progenitors.” As part of her Master's program, she also studied at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, supported by an ERASMUS+ scholarship. During her Bachelor's studies at TU Darmstadt, she wrote a thesis titled “On the Neutrino Transport in Core-Collapse Supernovae: A Comparison of the FLASH and Alcar Codes.”

Lauren Henderson

University of Notre Dame

Lauren is a PhD candidate at the University of Notre Dame. Her area of expertise is in galactic archaeology, which utilizes old stars to study the evolution of galaxies. In particular, she studies dwarf galaxy chemical evolution and neutron-capture nucleosynthesis using medium-resolution spectra of stars. 

Dr. Luca Boccioli

University of California, Berkeley

Luca is a postdoc at UC Berkeley. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame in 2023, where he worked with Prof. Grant Mathews on the explodability of CCSNe. He is currently interested in continuing his Ph.D. work by studying the nucleosynthesis of CCSNe, the late-time properties of the explosion, and the role of convection in the gain region and inside the PNS. He also works on the microphysics aspect of supernovae and is planning to study how the presence of muons inside the proto-neutron star can affect different aspects of the explosion.

Dr. Sivahami (Sivi) Uthayakumaar

Facility for Rare Isotope Beams / Michigan State University

Sivahami (Sivi) received her masters-integrated undergraduate (MPhys) degree in Physics from the University of Surrey, UK. She then embarked on her PhD programme at the University of York, UK, under the supervision of Prof. Michael Bentley. During the PhD programme, her research was focused on looking at the structure of exotic nuclei by exploring the breaking of isospin symmetry along the N=Z line on the proton-rich side of the chart of nuclides. Since completing her PhD in 2022, she started her Postdoctoral Research Associate position at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) Laboratory working with the SuN group, led by Prof. Artemis Spyrou. Her primary focus is looking at how the elements that we see today are synthesized in stellar environments. To do this, direct measurements are often impossible to measure the reactions that take place in stellar environments, therefore indirect methods are utilized to obtain necessary information by studying basic nuclear properties. In her current work, Sivi uses the β-Oslo analysis technique to indirectly measure these reactions, which uses β decay to populate states in a particular nucleus of interest. 

Dr. Anirban Dutta

Michigan State University

Anirban is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Michigan State University. His research is focused on understanding stellar explosions. He received his PhD in observational astronomy and is currently developing a radiative transfer code to understand the spectra of supernovae. 

Dr. Brady Martin

University of Iowa

Brady studies theoretical nuclear physics with Prof. Wayne N. Polyzou at the University of Iowa, and he successfully defended his PhD thesis on April 17, 2025. His area of expertise is in nuclear reaction theory, and his graduate research used partition combinatorics to study reaction mechanisms in many-body scattering. 

Dr. Atul Kedia

North Carolina State University

Atul is a postdoc at North Carolina State University working on r-process nucleosynthesis. Prior to this, he was a postdoc at the Rochester Institute of Technology and worked on multimessenger inference. He completed his PhD at the University of Notre Dame where he worked on neutron star mergers studying gravitational wave dependence on dense matter equations of state and on thermalization during big bang nucleosynthesis. His research spans the domain of multi-messenger astrophysics and nuclear astrophysics involving neutron stars and includes gravitational wave emission, the kilonova signal, the impact and inference of the nuclear equation of state and the r-process nucleosynthesis. 

Dr. Joseph Derkin

Ohio University

Joseph studies low-energy experimental nuclear physics and recently defended his PhD at Ohio University (OU) in April of 2025, under the supervision of Prof. Carl Brune. His research primarily focuses on neutron spectroscopy and resonant reactions, with an emphasis on applications in stellar nucleosynthesis. He has developed novel techniques for profiling narrow resonances, including his work on the installation of the FAST neutron source at OU. Additionally, he has contributed to several stable and rare beam experiments at collaborating institutions. He will begin a postdoctoral appointment at the Nuclear Science Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame in the summer of 2025.