Frontiers at the Femtoscale: Science and Techniques

The nuclei at the heart of atoms is where almost all matter is concentrated. The limits of their existence, their organization and their applications frame the big questions and drive current activity in nuclear science. This talk will present a flavor of how we probe the structure of these strongly correlated and sometimes fragile quantum systems from an experimental perspective, and the current efforts around the world to expand our horizons and venture into terra incognita.

About the speaker:
Partha Chowdhury is Professor of Physics, Head of Graduate School, and Director of the Radiation Laboratory research center at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where his prior administrative hats have included department chair and Interim Vice Provost for Research. He received his B.Sc. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and his Ph.D. from Stony Brook University. Following a post-doctoral appointment at Argonne National Laboratory and a brief sojourn in India, he was a Visiting Scientist at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, before returning to the U.S. with a faculty position at Yale University in 1987. He moved to the University of Massachusetts Lowell in 1995, where he has been a tenured professor since 2000. Prof. Chowdhury’s research specialty is in experimental nuclear structure and advanced nuclear detection techniques, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. His primary research, carried out at large accelerator facilities, focuses on how nucleons organize at the center of the atom, how the individual and the collective influence each other at those small scales, and how we evolve our techniques to produce and study them at their limits.