RELATE Science Communication Workshop:
Brandon Patterson
By day, Brandon is a postdoctoral researcher studying the exciting subject of ultrasound bioeffects, at the University of Michigan Medical School. By night, Brandon is passionate about STEM communication and outreach and keeps busy with a variety of different flavors of public engagement. As a leader of RELATE (Researchers Expanding Lay-Audience Teaching and Engagement), Brandon helps other researchers to tell the tale of their work to everyone from their family at the Thanksgiving dinner table to journalists, members of their local community, and even their scientific peers. He is very excited to bring his passion for science communication to the nuclear astrophysics community.
Joseph Iafrate
Joseph (Joe) Iafrate is a PhD candidate in the Applied Physics program at the University of Michigan. He wants to understand how to use light and electric fields to control and measure electron and nuclear spins in semiconductors. For years, Joe has thought long and hard about how STEM researchers can most effectively connect with communities outside their academic disciplines. Through RELATE (Researchers Expanding Lay-Audience Teaching and Engagement), he helps researchers at Michigan and elsewhere put these principles into practice, creating effective oral presentations designed to make an impact.
Deanna Montgomery
As a medicinal chemistry PhD candidate at the University of Michigan, Deanna contributes to the early stages of developing a treatment for drug addiction. When not creating new chemicals or seeking to understand their biological effects, Deanna enjoys sharing her research and other science topics with anyone who will listen. She loves cultivating this passion in other scientists and takes pleasure in watching them develop better communication skills through her work with RELATE (Researchers Expanding Lay-Audience Teaching and Engagement).
Personal Branding:
Erik Simon
Erik Simon is a Graduate Career Consultant at the University of Notre Dame within the Center for Career Development. With over seven years’ experience in Career Services, and a background in elementary education and higher education student affairs, Erik takes a holistic "Self-Authorship" approach to personal and professional development in order to empower, serve, and support students in reaching their short-term and long-term goals. Erik is also a member of the Graduate Career Consortium, National Association of Colleges & Employers, and National Career Development Association. Learn more about Erik at educatorerik.weebly.com.
Scientific Writing:
Dr. Marialuisa Aliotta
As a nuclear astrophysicist, Dr. Aliotta is intrigued by the inner workings of stars, which she investigates through the study of nuclear reactions in terrestrial laboratories. Her research aims at understanding how stars are born, live and die and how chemical elements are created in our universe.
After obtaining her PhD in Physics from the University of Catania (Italy) in 1999, she spent two years at the Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum (Germany) as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow and then moved to the UK in 2001 on a permanent lectureship at the University of Edinburgh. Throughout her career, she has performed experiments at various laboratories worldwide, including TRIUMF (Canada), GANIL (France) and CERN (Switzerland) and joined the LUNA Collaboration in 2010. As of 2016, she is full professor of experimental nuclear astrophysics.
Always keen to share her knowledge and passion, she is an enthusiastic public speaker and an award-winning teacher. She also coaches and consults on various aspects of academic life (www.academiclife.coachesconsole.com), including on public speaking, writing and publishing, through mentoring programs, workshops and online courses. When not working, she loves cooking, reading, dancing tango, travelling, and generally spending time with family and friends.
Career Matrix:
Dr. Anna Frebel
After studying physics in Germany, Frebel received her PhD from the Australian National University's Mt. Stromlo Observatory in 2007, advised by Prof. John E. Norris. For her work on "Abundance Analysis of Bright Metal-Poor Stars from the 'Hamburg/ESO Survey", Frebel was awarded the 2007 Charlene Heisler Prize (for the best Australian astronomy PhD thesis). She then received the WJ McDonald Postdoctoral Fellowship which took her to Austin, TX (2006-2008) before taking up the Clay Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in early 2009. She was awarded the 2009 Ludwig-Biermann young astronomer award of the German Astronomical Society as well as the 2010 Annie Jump Cannon Award of the American Astronomical Society. In early 2012, Dr. Frebel joined the MIT physics faculty as Assistant Professor, and she won a 2013 NSF CAREER award. Dr. Frebel was promoted to Associate Professor of Physics with tenure in 2017.
Non-Academic Career Panel:
Dr. William Peters
Dr. William Peters is Co-Director of the Applications Department and the Radiation Safety Officer at Niowave with 15 years’ experience leading nuclear physics projects and experiments at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and other national labs. Dr. Peters earned his Ph.D. in 2007 from Michigan State University, the top nuclear physics graduate program, on the development of the Modular Neutron Array and experiments on neutron-rich nuclei beyond the neutron dripline.
Upon graduation, Dr. Peters went to work for Rutgers University and later for the University of Tennessee, stationed at Oak Ridge National Lab in east Tennessee. During the next eleven years, Dr. Peters led several DOE-funded projects on topics from fission to nuclear astrophysics. Additionally, he developed several different types of experimental nuclear physics detector systems for neutrons and charged particles including designing, assembling, and commissioning a new neutron detector array optimized for slower neutrons from nuclear astrophysics experiments.
After starting at Niowave as a Nuclear Physicist in the Applications Department, Dr. Peters was asked to take over the RSO position and oversee all of the NRC licenses and radioisotope production processes at Niowave, a company committed to producing radioisotopes that cure cancer and save lives. At Niowave he enjoys the research-like atmosphere coupled with goal-oriented timelines; applying physics to innovative solutions in the private sector.
Dr. Rhiannon Hutton
Dr. Rhiannon Hutton is a Research Staff Member at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a federally-funded research and development center in Alexandria, VA. IDA provides objective analyses on national security issues and related national challenges, particularly those requiring extraordinary scientific, technical, and analytic expertise. Dr. Hutton's research portfolio is focused on strategic issues, including nuclear deterrence and ballistic missile defense. Prior to joining IDA in 2014, she was a Director’s Postdoc Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, performing high-precision neutron-induced fission measurements of actinides. Dr. Hutton holds a Ph.D. in physics from Michigan State University and a B.S. degree in physics from Florida State University.
Dr. Ernesto Batista Mané Júnior
Ernesto received his PhD in experimental Nuclear Physics from the University of Manchester in 2009. His thesis was on the commissioning of an ion trap and its use with laser spectroscopy techniques to study rare isotopes produced at CERN-ISOLDE. He did a 3-year postdoc at the Canadian Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics. In 2012, he returned to Brazil and became a Fellow of the Brazilian Diplomatic Academy. In 2014, he entered permanently into the Brazilian Diplomatic Corps. For the last 3 years he has been working with multilateral Disarmament and Non-proliferation. Ernesto is returning to academia for a one-year sabbatical at the Global Science and Security studies at the University of Princeton, where he will investigate technical and policy approaches to safeguarding the fuel cycle of nuclear powered submarines
Dr. Greg Meece
Greg is a Data Analyst at Sparrow Health System in Lansing Michigan. He earned his PhD in Astrophysics at Michigan State University, where his research focused on using large scale simulations to study feedback processes in galaxy clusters. Greg lives in DeWitt with his wife and 1 year old daughter.
Academic Career Panel:
Dr. Artemis Spyrou
Dr. Artemis Spyrou received her PhD in experimental nuclear astrophysics from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece in 2007 and has been at MSU ever since. She initially joined as a postdoc, then Assistant Professor and now Associate Professor of Physics. Since 2015 she has also been the Associate Director for Education and Outreach for the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams. Her research is in the field of Nuclear Astrophysics. As an experimentalist she designs and performs experiments to study nuclear properties that drive astrophysical processes. She runs experiments and collaborates with scientists all over the world. As Associate Director she oversees the education, outreach and diversity activities of the laboratory. This includes ensuring that all of the students and postdocs receive proper mentoring and that the lab is a welcoming and inclusive workplace. She enjoys participating in outreach activities like giving public talks and presenting physics demos at outreach events.
Dr. Marialuisa Aliotta
As a nuclear astrophysicist, Dr. Aliotta is intrigued by the inner workings of stars, which she investigates through the study of nuclear reactions in terrestrial laboratories. Her research aims at understanding how stars are born, live and die and how chemical elements are created in our universe.
After obtaining her PhD in Physics from the University of Catania (Italy) in 1999, she spent two years at the Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum (Germany) as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow and then moved to the UK in 2001 on a permanent lectureship at the University of Edinburgh. Throughout her career, she has performed experiments at various laboratories worldwide, including TRIUMF (Canada), GANIL (France) and CERN (Switzerland) and joined the LUNA Collaboration in 2010. As of 2016, she is full professor of experimental nuclear astrophysics.
Always keen to share her knowledge and passion, she is an enthusiastic public speaker and an award-winning teacher. She also coaches and consults on various aspects of academic life (www.academiclife.coachesconsole.com), including on public speaking, writing and publishing, through mentoring programs, workshops and online courses. When not working, she loves cooking, reading, dancing tango, travelling, and generally spending time with family and friends.
Dr. George Perdikakis
Central Michigan University
Dr. Brian O’Shea
Brian O'Shea is a computational and theoretical astrophysicist studying cosmological structure formation, including galaxy formation and the behavior of the hot, diffuse plasma in the intergalactic medium and within galaxy clusters. He is also a co-author of the Enzo AMR code, an expert in high performance computing, and an advocate for open-source computing and open-source science. He received his B.S. in Engineering Physics at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 2000, and his PhD in physics from UIUC in 2005 (with 2002-2005 being spent as a graduate student in residence at the Laboratory for Computational Astrophysics at UC San Diego and in the Theoretical Astrophysics Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory). Following that, he was a Director's Postdoctoral Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, with a joint appointment between the Theoretical Astrophysics Group and the Applied Physics Division. Since 2008, he has been a member of the faculty at Michigan State University, with a joint appointment between the Department of Computational Mathematics, Science and Engineering (2015-present), the Department of Physics and Astronomy (2008-present), and the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (2014-present). From 2008-2015, Dr. O'Shea was a member of Lyman Briggs College. He has authored or co-authored over 75 peer-reviewed journal articles in astrophysics, computer science, and education research journals, and has received a variety of awards for his teaching and public outreach efforts. In 2016, he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
