Speakers and Presenters

OPENING SPEAKERS

  
Sen. Warner was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2008 and reelected to a third term in November 2020. He serves as Chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence and as a member of the Senate Finance, Banking, Budget, and Rules Committees.

During his time in the Senate, Sen. Warner has established himself as a bipartisan leader who works across the aisle to accomplish real solutions for Virginians. He has served as a key author and negotiator of several pieces of critical legislation aimed at rebuilding our nation's infrastructure, improving cybersecurity, restoring domestic manufacturing, protecting national security, rebounding from the COVID-19 crisis, and investing in underserved and underbanked communities.

Sen. Warner has been recognized as a national leader in fighting for families, hardworking Virginians, and our brave servicemembers. From protecting the highest levels of national security through his work leading the Senate Intelligence Committee, to fighting to expand broadband to every corner of the Commonwealth, Sen. Warner has been a tireless advocate for a safer, stronger, more prosperous Virginia.

From 2002 to 2006, he served as Governor of Virginia. When he left office in 2006, Virginia was ranked as the best state for business, the best-managed state, and the best state in which to receive a public education. The first in his family to graduate from college, Sen. Warner spent 20 years as a successful technology and business leader in Virginia before entering public office. An early investor in the cellular telephone business, he co-founded the company that became Nextel and invested in hundreds of start-up technology companies that created tens of thousands of jobs.

Sen. Warner and his wife Lisa Collis live in Alexandria, Virginia. They have three daughters.

 

Dr. Asmeret Asefaw Berhe is the Director of the Office of Science for the U.S. Department of Energy. Dr. Berhe is currently on leave from the University of California, Merced where she holds the Ted and Jan Falasco Chair in Earth Sciences and Geology; is a Professor of Soil Biogeochemistry; and served as Associate Dean for Graduate Education. Her research focus lies at the intersection of soil science, global change science, and political ecology with an emphasis on how the soil system regulates the earth's climate and the dynamic two-way relationship between the natural environment and human communities.

She previously served as the Chair of the U.S. National Committee on Soil Science and member of the Board of International Scientific Organizations at the National Academies; Leadership board member for the Earth Science Women's Network; and founding a co-principal investigator in the ADVANCEGeo Partnership - a National Science Foundation funded effort to empower scientists to respond to and prevent harassment, discrimination, bullying and other exclusionary behaviors in research environments.

Her scholarship and efforts to ensure equity and inclusion of people from all walks of life in the scientific enterprise have received numerous awards and honors. Dr. Berhe is a member of the National Academy of Engineering; she is also a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the Geological Society of America and a member of the inaugural class o the U.S. National Academies' New Voices in Science, Engineering and Medicine.

 

Congressman Randy Weber is a public servant, proven conservative, former small business owner, and third-generation Texan representing the 14th District of Texas. In Congress, he serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has the broadest jurisdiction of any legislative committee in Congress. Weber also serves on the Science Space and Technology.

For over 70 years, Randy Weber has called the Gulf Coast home - a place to start a family and build a business. Although juggling work and family takes great amounts of time and effort, Weber makes time to be an active member of his church and community. Weber built his air conditioning company, Weber's Air & Heat, in 1981 from scratch and grew his business by using what his grandfather used to call "good old-fashion Texas horse sense and a strong work ethic." Like others who have successfully moved from business to public service, Weber's real-world experience in the private sector underpins his commitment to lower taxes, his contempt for wasteful spending and his firm dedication to better schools.

Prior to being elected to Congress, Weber served four years in the Texas State House. During his tenure, Weber served on the committees of Environmental Regulation, Public Education, and as Vice Chair of Border and Intergovernmental Affairs. While serving in the Texas House, Randy Weber authored landmark legislation to combat human trafficking to combat human trafficking and protect women, young girls, and boys - some as young as 12 years old.

Weber has lived in a 20-mile radius all his life and has been married to Brenda Weber, a retired schoolteacher, for over 45 years. He is a graduate of Alvin Community College, and holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Houston at Clear Lake. Randy and Brenda have three children and eight wonderful grandchildren. He previously served on the House Foreign Affairs and Transportation and Infrastructure Committee

 

Stuart Henderson is the Director of the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab), a U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory. Jefferson Lab's mission focuses on fundamental nuclear physics research and underlying particle accelerator and detector technology development to enable scientific discovery. He also serves as the Governor's Distinguished CEBAF Professor at Old Dominion University.

Henderson is an internationally recognized expert in particle accelerators. Prior to joining Jefferson Lab, Henderson served as the Director of the Advanced Photon Source Upgrade Project at Argonne National Laboratory, where he led the effort to design and build a 4th-generation synchrotron light source to produce the world's brightest hard x-rays. Previously, Henderson served as Associate Laboratory Director for Accelerators at Fermilab, leading the laboratory's accelerator research, development, construction and operations activities. He worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Spallation Neutron Source from 2001 to 2010, where he played key roles in constructing and commissioning the worlds most powerful accelerator-based neutron science user facility. He worked at the Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR) from 1991 to 2001, first as a research fellow with Harvard University, and then as a Cornell research staff member. He has a Ph.D. in Physics from Yale University and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He has served on numerous advisory and review committees for scientific facilities and funding agencies around the world.

 

PLENARY TALK PRESENTERS

 

Paolo Giubellino is the Scientific Managing Director of the GSI Helmholtz Center and of the FAIR International Laboratory, Darmstadt, Germany since January 1, 2017. GSI is a historic accelerator laboratory in Nuclear Physics, where six of the chemical elements were discovered and applications such as carbon therapy of cancer were pioneered. FAIR, currently under construction, is one of the largest new accelerator complexes worldwide, with a broad scientific program including hadron physics, high energy heavy ion physics, nuclear structure, nuclear astrophysics, atomic physics, plasma physics, biophysics and material science. In this very moment the installation of the FAIR accelerators have started in the newly constructed buildings.

Paolo Giubellino spent most of his scientific career in INFN, Italy, an an experimental Physicist working on High-Energy Nuclear Collisions. He was one of the initiators of the ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC, in which he was in charge of the Inner Tracking System, and , from 2010 to 2016, of the whole experiment. He is full Professor at the Institut fur Kernphysik of TU Darmstadt.

Giubellino has been awarded numerous recognitions, among which two Doctor honoris causa degrees, the "Enrico Fermi" Prize, the highest recognition of the Italian Physical Society, the "Lise Meitner" Prize, the highest recognition for Nuclear Physics of the European Physical Society and the title of "commendatore" of the Italian Republic for scientific merits. He has served on numerous advisory and review committees for scientific facilities and funding agencies around the world and is a member of the Academia Europaea and of the Italian Accademia delle Scienze.

 

 

 
William Graves is Project Director of the Compact X-ray Free Electron Laser (CXFEL) project at Arizona State University and is also Director of Accelerator Physics at ASU and a Professor in CISA - College of Integrative Sciences and Arts. CXFEL began construction in March 2023 under a midscale research infrastructure award from NDF's Division of Biological Sciences with the goal to generate femtosecond pulses of fully coherent x-rays.

William came to ASU in 2015 to pursue development of compact ultrafast x-ray sources that scale down the major facilities to room size. He focuses particularly on student involvement in research. The CXFEL project employs about twenty undergrads and five graduate students in hands-on accelerator and laser research, and has a record of sending undergraduates on to various PhD programs around the world in accelerator physics and laser science.

Prior to ASU, Professor Graves spent more than a decade at MIT developing compact sources and collaborating on major XFEL projects in the US and abroad. His early career focused on developing novel seeded FEL projects based on high-gain harmonic-generation at Brookhaven National Lab following his 1993 PHD in Physics from UW-Madison. His primary technical interests are in dynamics and measurement of bright ultrafast electron beams at the attosecond to femtosecond timescales, coherent x-ray generation, and development of novel accelerator structures.

Kristin Hirsch is the Director of the office of Radiological Security (ORS) within U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration's (DOE/NNSA) Office of Global Material Security, a position she has held since March 2019. ORS works domestically in the United States and internationally with over 100 countries to secure radiological sources in use or storage; remove disused sources and disposition them or place them into secure storage; and to encourage the use of non-radioisotopic technologies in place of radiological sources to achieve permanent risk reduction. Ms. Hirsch previously spent 3 years as the Director of the U.S. DOE office in Astana, Kazakhstan; as a project manager for the Global Threat Reduction Initiative implementing nuclear and radiological security projects in Europe; and 3 years as an Attache in the U.S. DOE Office in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Russia. She started her federal career in 1999 working for the Department of Defense. Ms. Hirsch holds a Bachelor's Degree in History and a Master's Degree in Internal Affairs.

 

Cornelia Hoehr received her Ph.D. in physics from Heidelberg University in Germany and the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg. After a post-doctoral research term at the Argonne National Lab, USA, she then moved to TRIUMF as a post-doctoral researcher, and subsequently took on roles in operation and facilities in isotope production and proton therapy. In 2013 she became a research scientist at TRIUMF and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria. In 2018 she became Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia - Okanagan and took over the role as Deputy Director - Life Sciences Division at TRIUMF. Her research interests are focused on medical isotope production and proton therapy. She is a member of the steering committee for the Particle Therapy Co-Operative Group (PTCOG), consultant to the IAEA in isotope production, and was chair of the TRIUMF User Group Executive Committee (TUEC).

 

Cynthia Keppel is the Associate Director for Physics at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab), and a Co-Director of the JLab Biomedical Research and Innovation Center. She is a Spokesperson for twelve JLab electron scattering experiments focusing on aspects of nucleon and meson structure, and a past Spokesperson of the the Coordinated Theoretical-Experimental Project on QCD (CTEQ). Dr. Keppel holds nine patents for nuclear medicine and radiation therapy technologies, and served as the Scientific and Executive Director of the Hampton University (HU) Proton Therapy Institute. She received her PhD from the American University for research at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. She has received the Department of Energy Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellowship, R&D 100 and Medical Technology Breakthrough Awards, a National Science Foundation CAREER grant, and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. She has served on numerous national and international committees, including the National Nuclear Science Advisory Committee and the National Institutes of Health National Council for Research Resources. She is an author of over 160 peer-reviewed publications, including three invited review articles.

 

Khachatur Manukyan is a Research Associate Professor at the Nuclear Science Laboratory in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Notre Dame. He earned his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Yerevan State University in Armenia in 2006. After earning his doctorate, he served as a lecturer in Yerevan State University and held visiting scientist positions at both the Institute of Chemical Physics at the National academy of Sciences of Armenia in Yerevan and the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology in Dübendorf. In 2010, Manukyan was awarded a Fulbright Visiting Scholar position at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. By 2013, he has become a research associate in the Department of Physics and later transitioned to the role of Research assistant Professor.

Manukyan's research seeks to unravel the intricacies of novel material creation, where the domains of material science, chemistry, and physics merge. He is captivated by the swift physical and chemical processes that bring about significant structural changes, such as rapid phase transitions, amorphization, and crystallization. Beyond contemporary materials, Manukyan's interests also encompass the structure, composition, an preparation methods of artworks, ancient alloys, medieval manuscripts, historical documents, and even paper money. Through these ancient artifacts, he aims to forge a deep connection with our predecessors, illuminating the materials they skillfully used an the techniques they perfected. In doing do, he creates a juncture where history and science merge.

Throughout his scientific career, Manukyan has published over 100 research articles in journals and co-authored a book in these fields.

 

Mika Masuzawa is an accelerator scientist, currently serving as Division Head of the SuperKEKB project. She was a member of E760 experiment at Fermilab and received her Ph.D. in physics from Northwestern University. After spending a few years as a postdoctoral researcher at Boston University working on SuperKamiokande experiment, she moved to KEK and has been working on KEKB B-factory accelerator and SuperKEKB accelerator since. She received Toshiko Yuasa Gold Prize, for women who have made outstanding research achievements in physics and related fields, in 2020 by Ochanomizu University. She also conducts educational activities on accelerators. She served as the KEK High Energy Accelerator Seminar principal for three years. The seminar has been held every year since 1984 with the aim of nurturing young researchers who will be responsible for future high energy accelerators and deepening the understanding of accelerator science among researchers. She is a council member of the Accelerator Society of Japan.

 

Arlene Modeste Knowles is the Project Manager and a primary driver for the American Institute of Physics TEAM-UP Project, a collective action initiative lead by several physical science societies, which aims to double the number of African Americans earning bachelor's degrees in physics and astronomy. She successfully guided the TEAM_UP project through the completion of its research phase, which culminated in the TEAM-UP Report, and continues to oversee the project through its implementation phase by engaging and galvanizing the larger STEM comunity to implement the report's recommendations for systematic change. For over three decades, Ms. Knowles developed, managed, and led diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Physics, and in partnership with several other physical science societies. Throughout her long career, she has been a staunch leader, champion and advocate for the inclusion and success of people traditionally marginalized in the physical sciences. Ms. Knowles is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Human Development (pre-med track) from Cornell University.

*TEAM-UP Together Program
teamuptogether.org
TEAM -UP Together is a collective action initiative led by the American Association of Physics Teachers, American Astronomical Society, American Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, and Society of Physics Students to drive systemic change in the physical science community and increase successful outcomes for Black and African American students pursuing undergraduate degrees in physics and astronomy. Our mission is to empower a community of scientists, administrators, faculty, policy makers, philanthropists, and students to create a culture of inclusion, support, and success for Black and African American students in these fields. To advance our mission, this groundbreaking national program provides funding and support to students as well as physics and astronomy academic departments that partner with us to reach our goal of doubling the number of Black and African American students earning bachelor's degrees in physics and astronomy by the year 2030.

 

Ciprian Plostinar is an accelerator scientist, currently serving as the Project Manager for the European Spallation Source (ESS Accelerator in Lund, Sweden. In this role, he oversees the delivery of one of the world's most complex and ambitious high-power linac machines. Before joining ESS, Ciprian spent over a decade at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK, where he contributed significantly to the upgrade efforts for the ISIS accelerator and worked on proton driver developments for a future Neutrino Factory. He holds a doctoral degree from the University of Oxford and maintains an active collaboration with the John Adams Institute for Accelerator Science. He has been an integral part of numerous international accelerator collaborations across Europe, Asia and North America.

In addition to his professional achievements, Ciprian is deeply committed to science outreach. He co-founded educational programs dedicated to improving access to education, showcasing his passion for advancing scientific knowledge.

 

James Rosenzweig is a Distinguished Professor of Physics in the UCLA Department of Physics and Astronomy specializing in research into advances accelerator, beam and radiation techniques, and their frontier applications across science. In pursuit of these goals, he directs a large research group at UCLA, the Particle Beam Physics Laboratory (PBPL.) The PBPL concentrates on fundamental aspects of high brightness, ultra-fast relativistic electron beams, with application to very high field accelerators based on lasers, wakefields, plasmas, dielectrics and to radiation production, such as free-electron lasers and Compton scattering sources. This research enables new scientific methods using electron, terahertz optical and X-ray beams, which have to applications ranging from high field pumps to study nonequilibrium high field phenomena, and atomic-molecular level ultra-fast imaging techniques. This research program is based on-campus at the MITHRA advanced accelerator lad and the MOTHRA high field microwave research lab. These state-of-the-art facilities are complemented by a large external program emphasizing wakefield acceleration and at user facilities. Professor Rosenzweig is the author of more than 600 scientific articles and has written a textbook, Fundamentals of Beam Physics, emphasizing unity of concepts between charged particle and laser beams. He is a lifetime member and Fellow of the American Physical Society. He has been the recipient of Sloan, SCC and Wilson Fellowships. In recognition of his contributions to his research fields, he has received the 2007 International Free-electron Laser Prize, 2022 Advanced Accelerator Prize and the 2023 Alfven Prize in Plasma Physics. Professor Rosenzweig has trained over 35 graduate students, and these scientists have gone on to key positions in the national labs, universities, and industry. He has served five years as the Chair of the UCLA Department of Physics and Astronomy, and has also co-founded several industrial accelerator companies.

 

Thomas Roser is a senior scientist emeritus at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL).  Roser has served as a senior scientist, Deptuy Associate Laboratory Director for Accelerators, and Chair of the Collider-Accelerator Department at BNL with responsibility for the operation of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC).  He oversaw the high intensity beam development at the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron and led the commissioning of RHIC.  Prior to joining BNL, Roser was an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, working on spin effects in high-energy elastic pp scattering and acceleration of polarized proton beams.  Roser is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE).  He has received the Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society/IEEE Particle Accelerator Science and Technology Award.  Roser earned a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich.

 

Maurizio Vretenar is a senior accelerator physicist and project leader at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland. He earned his PhD in Physics at the University of Trieste (Italy) and after an appointment at the Karlsruhe Research Center (Germany), he joined CERN in 1988 to participate in projects related to design, construction, and operation of linear particle accelerators. From 1995 to 2010 he was responsible for the radio-frequency systems of the CERN linear accelerators; and from 2008 to 2017 he was Project Leader for the construction of Linac4, the new injector for the CERN accelerator complex required to increase the intensity of the Large Hadron Collider. Since 2013 he started a parallel activity as Coordinator of large EU-supported projects for coordinated particle accelerator R&D, taking the responsibility of EuCARD-2, ARIES, and more recently of the innovation-oriented I.FAST (Innovation Fostering in Accelerator Science and Technology.) 

In recent years he has been increasingly active in the design of compact accelerators for societal applications, with a particular focus in the medical field, where since 2019, he is leading the Next Ion Medical Machine Study (NIMMS), an international collaboration led by CERN to advance cancer therapy with compact ion accelerators.

 

Gary Was is the University of Michigan's Walter J. Weber, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Sustainable Energy, Environmental and Earth Systems Engineering. He specializes in materials for advanced nuclear energy systems and radiation materials science while leading the development of ion irradiation as a technique for emulating neutron irradiation effects in reactor structural materials.  A fellow of five technical societies and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Nuclear Materials, Was has published more than 300 technical articles in refereed archival journals.  He has presented more than 500 conference papers and talks, delivered more than 260 invited talks and seminars, and published a graduate-level textbook on Radiation Materials Science in 2007 - with a second edition in 2017.  In addition to U-M appointments in Nuclear Engineering & Radiological Sciences and Materials Science & Engineering, Was has held positions as Director of the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Energy Institute, Associate Dean of the College of Engineering, and Chair of the Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences Department.

 

Sherry J. Yennello is University Distinguished Professor, Regents Professor of Chemistry, Director of the Cyclotron Institute, and holder of the Bright Chair in Nuclear Science at Texas A&M University. A fellow of the American Chemical Society (2011), the American Physical Society (2005), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2013.) Yennello's many awards include the ACS's Glenn T. Seaborg Award for Nuclear Chemistry (2021), ACS's Francis P. Garvin-John M. Olin Medal (2011), Southeastern Universities Research Association Distinguished Scientist Award (2023), the Texas A&M Women's Faculty Network Outstanding Mentor Award (2010), The Texas A&M Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching at both the university and college levels (2012 and 2008, respectively), the Texas A&M Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award in Administration (2019), The APS Division of Nuclear Physics Mentoring Award (2017), the Sigma Xi National Young Investigator Award (2000), The NSF Young Investigator Award (1994), the Oak Ridge Junior Faculty Enhancement Award (1993) and the General Electric Faculty for the Future Award (1993.)

Yennello earned her PhD from Indiana University in 1990. Her research on the nuclear equation-of-state impacts such fundamental question as, "What is the origin of the elements?" and "How are neutron-rich and heavy nuclei synthesized in the core of a star during stellar evolution?" Her areas of interest include equity and access to education and professional advancement for all, including both creating opportunities and motivating students to take advantage of opportunities that are available. She strives to motivate current stakeholders to be agents of change.