Scott Conley, an environmental engineer for Jefferson Lab, grew up the son of an outdoorsman, and the grandson of a half-Cherokee grandmother. Stories of nature - listening to nature, and readings its signs - filled his childhood. “I can see the bottom of the leaves on the trees,” Conley said, re-enacting the first time he heard this lesson from his father. “That means the pressure is changing and it’s probably going to storm.”
A tinkerer from the Navy finds purpose at Jefferson Lab
Paul Vasilauskis grew up in the South suburbs of Chicago riding his bike through miles of large abandoned farm fields rich with ponds, creeks and wooded areas. He devoured rows of books and magazines. “Popular Mechanics” and “Mechanics Illustrated” were his favorite. “I used to sit downstairs in the spare room and just read from the encyclopedia and old magazines especially anything that said ‘atomic’ or ‘nuclear’ in it,” he said.
Phiala Shanahan loves having problems to solve—and a team to collaborate with on her quest to prove her theories. Though she is one of the newest senior scientists at Jefferson Lab, Shanahan already has identified and developed a plan for how she might help solve one of the biggest problems facing nuclear physicists: the true structure of strong forces within the nucleus. Now it’s up to her team of collaborators to prove her theory.
The International Services Office (ISO) assists international employees, users and guests at Jefferson Lab (JLab) with immigration counseling, document issuance, and related services. Serving as the liaison between the Lab and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, ISO ensures compliance with federal regulations regarding international employee and guest immigration documents and responsibilities, including regular immigration orientation sessions, employment and status maintenance advising, and government reporting.
Jessie Butler likes to analyze technologies and figure out how to make complex systems work together. As the work coordinator for Jefferson Lab’s Experimental Hall A, Butler leads a team of four electro-mechanical technicians who are responsible for maintenance and upkeep of experimental equipment and electronics in the hall, ensuring that they will work properly and deliver on the scientific mission of the lab.
Juggling Physics research and Hollywood consulting was bound to have its terrifying moments. James Maxwell, on-call physics advisor for the 2016 “Ghostbusters” film, was buried in research on high field polarization of Helium-3 when his cell phone rang. He stepped outside of a lab at Brookhaven National Laboratory to answer a call from Ghostbuster’s actress Melissa McCarthy. But “the call dropped!” Maxwell recalls, wide-eyed, as if reliving the shock and horror of a moment which later earned him a joking punch in the arm from McCarthy.
Scientific discoveries require more than just science; they require tools, equipment and resources to enable scientists to conduct their research. That’s where Renee Carter comes in. As a procurement administrator, Carter is focused on securing the tools, materials and devices that Jefferson Lab researchers need to fulfill every aspect of their work.
Researcher Relies on Jefferson Lab’s Powerful ‘Microscope’ to Study Weak Forces
Krishna Kumar has made it his life’s work to study the space within atoms. He pursues answers to life’s basic questions: Where did we come from? How are we put together? What happened right after the Big Bang?
