Junior Workshop Invited Speakers

Dan Bardayan is the Director of the Notre Dame Nuclear Science Laboratory and the Institute for Nuclear Structure and Astrophysics as well as a Professor in the Notre Dame Department of Physics and Astronomy.  Dan received his B.S. from Tennessee Technological University and his Ph.D. from Yale University.  He was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of North Carolina before joining Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) as a Wigner Fellow.  Dan was promoted to senior staff at ORNL before joining the faculty of Notre Dame in 2013.  Dan's research focus is on understanding the reactions and properties of exotic nuclei that drive astrophysical explosions.

Dr. Keith Davis has over 25 years of experience presenting science to the general public in planetariums. He volunteered at the planetarium during his time at Clemson University as a graduate student studying astrophysics, and joined the Notre Dame faculty as the Director of the Digital Visualization Theater (DVT) in 2008. In this role he has presented scientific topics to tens of thousands of public visitors to the DVT of all ages and insists on a live and interactive presentation style even in the dark environment of a planetarium. He has also been a leader in the Live Interactive Planetarium Symposium (LIPS), currently the premier organization to practice and learn live presentation in domed theaters. He hosted the second annual LIPS conference after attending the inaugural meeting in 2011. Since then, he has continued to serve as a respected member of the Planetarium community, including serving as Inclusion and Outreach Officer of the Great Lakes Planetarium Association.

Pablo Giuliani completed his Bachelors in Physics at Universidad Simón Bolívar, Venezuela in 2016, and his PhD at Florida State University in 2020, under the mentoring of Jorge Piekarewicz. In 2021 he started a postdoctoral joint position between the Statistics and Probability Department and the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), both at Michigan State University. He is now continuing his efforts in education and research at FRIB as the Nuclear Science and Graduate Student Success Specialist. His main research areas involve adapting and developing frameworks from statistics and machine learning to enable scientific discoveries in nuclear physics, while the education areas focus on conducting activities and developing materials to propel students to thrive in their academic programs. His doggie, Dirac, is the goodest of boys.

As a Graduate Career Consultant at Notre Dame's College of Science, Luna Rodriguez brings a rich background in science and a passion for mentoring students. With her Bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Puerto Rico and advanced degrees in Meteorology from The Pennsylvania State University, Luna has a solid academic foundation in the sciences. Her experience working at esteemed institutions such as the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the Science and Technology for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, provided her with valuable insights into research and applied science.

During her time as a research scientist, Luna primarily supported military applications, showcasing her ability to apply scientific knowledge to real-world problems. However, her transition to the University of Nevada in Las Vegas as the Assistant Director for STEM and Multicultural outreach demonstrated her dedication to fostering diversity and inclusion within STEM fields and engaging with local communities.

Even while working at a remote consulting firm in Atmospheric and Computer Science, Luna found herself missing the direct interaction with students. This longing, coupled with her passion for science and mentorship, ultimately led her to Notre Dame, where she can combine her expertise in science with her desire to guide and support graduate students in their career development.

In her role as a Graduate Career Consultant, Luna likely provides invaluable support to students in navigating career paths within the sciences, offering guidance on internships, job opportunities, further education, and networking. Her diverse background and experiences allow her to connect with students from various backgrounds and disciplines, helping them to achieve their professional goals in the field of science.

Guy is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of British Columbia in conjunction with TRIUMF. His project focuses on constructing and characterizing the silicon strip detectors used for exotic beta-decay spectroscopy at the heavy-ion storage ring complex at GSI Darmstadt, Germany. In 2017, he graduated from the Australian National University with a Bachelor of Philosophy (Hon) and first-class honors, where he worked on ionization chamber detectors that are currently used to detect the long-lived radioisotopes in Accelerator Mass Spectrometry. He is currently working specifically on storage rings but is broadly interested in all things nuclear astrophysics. 

Shelly R Lesher: Professor of Physics and Chair at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse Department of Physics and Astronomy, and Guest Professor at the University of Notre Dame. She received a B.A. in Physics from Indiana University South Bend and her PhD in Physics from the University of Kentucky. She was a postdoctoral fellow at KU Leuven in Belgium and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and has been a Presidential Fellow and Visiting Associate Professor of Physics at Yale University. Her research is funded by the NSF and currently focuses on studying low-energy vibrational structures in rare-earth nuclei using a variety of techniques. Since 2010, Lesher has called the Institute for Structure and Nuclear Astrophysics at the University of Notre Dame her “home” laboratory working with collaborators on training students and detector development. At her institution, she serves as the McNair Scholars Program Director, which aids students underrepresented in graduate education to pursue and succeed in earning PhDs. Serving as the Director of the Division of Nuclear Physics Conference Experience for Undergraduate (CEU) program she works with undergraduate students to attend a national nuclear physics conference to present their research. Lesher is the creator and host of My Nuclear Life a podcast which brings nuclear science to the general public. She was named a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2020. Recently, Lesher chaired the chapter “Developing a Nuclear Workforce for the Benefit of Society” in the 2023 NSAC Long Range Plan.

Rahul Somasundaram received his undergraduate degree in physics from St. Stephens College, University of Delhi. He then graduated from the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master's program in Nuclear Physics- a course offered by a consortium of partner universities in Spain, France, and Italy. After his Master's, Rahul moved to Lyon, France where he did his PhD under the supervision of Dr. Jerome Margueron and Dr. Hubert Hansen. During this time, his research was mostly focused on understanding the properties of extremely dense matter found in the cores of neutron stars. For this purpose, he used a variety of theoretical nuclear-physics models such as Chiral Effective Field Theory and Relativistic Mean Field approaches, as well as new experimental neutron star observations. He is now a postdoctoral fellow with the NP3M (Nuclear Physics from Multi-Messenger Mergers) collaboration- a research hub funded by the NSF. As part of this collaboration, he holds a joint position at Syracuse University and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). He primarily works with Dr. Duncan Brown in Syracuse on using gravitational wave detections to constrain the properties of neutron stars and with Dr. Ingo Tews at LANL on developing improved nuclear physics models with well-defined theoretical uncertainties. 

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. Panagiotis Gastis

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Matthew Redshaw is a professor of Physics at Central Michigan University where he has been for the past 12 years. Matt received his undergraduate degree from the University of Surrey, UK. During this time he spent one year as a research assistant at Florida State University working on laser spectroscopy of highly charged ions. He returned to FSU for his PhD and a subsequent postdoctoral position working on high-precision Penning trap mass spectrometry with applications in atomic and neutrino physics. He then moved to MSU/NSCL where he was a postdoctoral researcher working with the LEBIT Penning trap group. He continues to collaborate with the LEBIT group and Penning trap groups at Argonne National Laboratory and TRIUMF. His research focuses on precise mass measurements with applications to neutrino, nuclear, and astrophysics, and tests of fundamental physics. Outside of physics, Matt coaches his kids soccer teams and enjoys four seasons of outdoor activities in Michigan.

Dr. Nicole Vassh

TRIUMF