Main Meeting Invited Speakers

Dr Philip (Phil) Adsley is an assistant professor at the Department of Physics & Astronomy and the Cyclotron Institute at Texas A&M University. His research focuses on indirect measurements of thermonuclear reaction rates for stellar nucleosynthesis and related clustering phenomena in nuclear systems. He studied Natural Sciences at Peterhouse, the oldest college of the University of Cambridge, as an undergraduate and then completed a PhD at the University of York, having performed experiments at TRIUMF, Munich and Orsay. He then did two postdocs at iThemba LABS  in Cape Town (2014-2016 and 2019-2021) with an enjoyable cheese-filled stay at IPN Orsay near Paris in between. He moved to Texas A&M University in the summer of 2021 (in the middle of the covid pandemic, one of the more stressful experiences of his life). Likes: magnetic spectrometers, inelastic scattering, intense stable beams. Dislikes: neutrons, radioactive ion beams, Mozart.

I am an associate professor at the University of Naples Federico II, the oldest public university in the world. My research focuses on the measurement of low-energy cross sections of nuclear reactions of importance for nuclear astrophysics. These are very challenging measurements, and due to the extremely low event rate much of my work takes place in the ultra-low background environment of the deep underground Gran Sasso national laboratory (LNGS, Italy) as member of the LUNA collaboration. I am PI of the ERC-funded project SHADES, which aims at measuring the astrophysically important reaction 22Ne(a,n)25Mg at the LNGS.

I obtained a M.S. from the Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany (2007) and a M.S. (2011) and PhD at the University of Notre Dame, USA (2012).

Dr. Ezzeddine completed her PhD in the south of France in Physics and Astronomy from the Université de Montpellier. She completed JINA-CEE postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 2016-2019, where she also obtained a Heising-Simons Physics Fellowship in 2019 to support her Postdoctoral work at MIT. As of 2020, she joined the faculty at the University of Florida as an Assistant Professor, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate level courses in Astrophysics as well as leads an active research group of 4 graduate students, 1 postdoc and numerous undergraduate students working on relevant and exciting research topics. 

Dr. Ezzeddine’s research interests spans a broad range of observational, theoretical and computational topics in modern stellar astrophysics. She is interested in numerical modelling and physics of radiative transfer in stellar atmospheres and quantitative spectroscopy, as well as detailed UV and Optical spectroscopic studies of chemical and dynamical stellar structure of the Milky Way and early star forming galaxies. She studies nearby stars to constrain the first stars and galaxies, the origin of the elements and the history of our Galaxy. She is a core member of the R-process Alliance (RPA) collaboration. 

Dr. Gezerlis’s research focuses on quantum many-body theory, with an emphasis on fermions. His research touches on a wide range of topics from ultracold atomic gases to terrestrial nuclei to the astrophysical objects known as neutron stars. Dr. Gezerlis uses microscopic simulation methods on modern supercomputers, along with more phenomenological approaches, to predict or postdict interesting physics. Key areas of focus include:

1. From nucleons to nuclei. The interaction between nucleons arises from the fundamental theory of Quantum Chromodynamics. 

2. Neutron Stars. Dr. Gezerlis focuses on the crust and core, using terrestrial experiments to constrain nuclear theory, while also trying to quantify the theoretical uncertainty of astrophysically relevant microscopic calculations.

3. Ultracold atoms. Dr. Gezerlis is interested in the overlap of cold atomic systems with the physics of nuclei and neutron stars.

Professor Yuri A. Litvinov is the head of the Stored Particles Atomic Physics Research Collaboration (SPARC) Detectors group within the Atomic Physics research department at the GSI/FAIR laboratory in Germany. In addition to his role at GSI, he serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Heidelberg. Litvinov's research focuses on precision experiments employing heavy-ion storage rings, contributing to cross-discipline studies in nuclear structure, atomic physics, and astrophysics. He studied physics in St. Petersburg, completing his Ph.D. at Gießen University and GSI in 2003. Since then, he has been a scientist at GSI. Additionally, Professor Litvinov has served as PI for the EU-funded ERC Consolidator Grant "ASTRUm".

Dr. Liu earned her PhD in Cosmochemistry from the University of Chicago in 2014. She is currently a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute of Astrophysical Research (IAR) at Boston University. Her research is focused stellar nucleosynthesis and mixing in stars and explosive events by studying the isotopic compositions of presolar grains extracted from primitive meteorites. Currently, Dr. Liu leads several NASA projects aimed at advancing our understanding of the stellar origins of presolar silicon carbide grains by obtaining their light- and heavy-element isotopic compositions using different types of mass spectrometric techniques.

Prof. Reddy is interested in nuclear and neutrino processes that underly extreme astrophysical phenomena (neutron star structure and evolution, core-collapse supernova, x-ray bursts, magnetar flares, and gamma-ray bursts). Other interests include the application of quantum many-body theory to nuclei, cold atom gases, nuclear matter, dense quark matter, and related phases in neutron stars.

Prof. Surman is a theoretical nuclear astrophysicist interested in the origins of the heaviest elements. While the basics of the nuclear processes that create these elements are understood, we do not yet know where the appropriate astrophysical conditions are found.  The most likely options are within some of the most extreme galactic events: the deaths of massive stars in core-collapse supernovae and the collisions of compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes. Many of the potential sites for element synthesis within these events are environments where neutrino interactions shape the resulting nucleosynthesis. The nuclei created are often extremely neutron-rich, beyond what has been observed in the laboratory to date but increasingly accessible in radioactive beam experiments. Prof. Surman’s research program focuses on neutrino physics and nuclear physics aspects of heavy element nucleosynthesis in core-collapse supernovae, neutron star mergers, and black hole accretion disks.