Registration is required for each session. If a session has reached capacity for the Zoom webinar, you may stream the presentation on YouTube Live. Please visit the registration webpage on the session date for the YouTube Live link. All webinars will be recorded and made available on the NSF Resource Center webpage following the event.

Contact the Office of Grants and Contracts to discuss proposal planning and research funding opportunities.

The Office of Grants and Contracts congratulates Assistant Professor of Physics, Michelle Kuchera, and Associate Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, Raghu Ramanujan, on a National Science Foundation Research in Undergraduate Institutions – RUI grant (2012865).

The three-year project titled, “Machine Learning Approaches for Accelerating Scientific Discovery in Nuclear Physics,” enables collaboration between theoretical and experimental nuclear physicists and computer scientists to aid in scientific discoveries using state-of-the-art machine learning methods at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, Argonne National Laboratory, Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, and the upcoming Electron Ion Collider.

The grant provides Davidson students who have an interest in physics, computer science, or mathematics with the opportunity to make significant contributions to national efforts which investigate fundamental properties of matter. To accomplish this, they work closely with world-renowned scientists at large-scale research facilities, which complements the experiences students enjoy at a small liberal arts institution. The students also have the opportunity to visit these laboratories and to present their work to a national audience at professional scientific conferences.

This NSF-funded project will be an integral part of the ALPhA group (Algorithms for Learning in Physics Applications), an ongoing research collaboration headed by Professors Kuchera and Ramanujan and driven by Davidson students. In addition to providing interdisciplinary research experiences that bridge nuclear physics, artificial intelligence, and data science, the project seeks to create an environment where students from different backgrounds – including women and students from traditionally underrepresented groups – can explore and launch their careers in scientific research.

We are very proud of this national recognition and support for the research conducted by the ALPhA group, under the leadership of Professors Kuchera and Ramanujan.

The Office of Grants and Contracts congratulates Assistant Professor of Physics, Anthony Kuchera on a National Science Foundation grant (2011398).

The $176,680 Collaborative Research at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (RUI) award titled “Study of Exotic Nuclear and Neutron Detector Response,” is a 3-year collaboration between Professor Kuchera and Professor Warren Rogers of Indiana Wesleyan University, who received a similar award. Both professors are  members of the Modular Neutron Array (MoNA) Collaboration which consists of faculty from primarily undergraduate institutions and Michigan State University.

The grant provides funding for 6 Davidson research students who will work alongside the collaborative team consisting of professors, graduate students, and postdocs. The students will be involved at every step of the research project, including weekly video conferences, participation in experiments, and attending professional conferences. There are typically limited opportunities for students to learn nuclear science in the classroom – particularly for undergraduate students in a small liberal arts setting – and this opportunity for training in research at state-of-the-art national facilities has the potential for producing the next generation of nuclear scientists who are also widely educated in the broader context of the humanities and social sciences.

The collaborative team will perform experiments using the Modular Neutron Array at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) in Michigan – the largest radioactive beam facility in the United States – as well as at Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The focus of the project is to study the properties of atomic nuclei that have many more neutrons than protons.

“We use beams of radioactive particles to undergo nuclear reactions and produce short-lived nuclei that decay by giving off their excess neutrons. We use MoNA to detect these neutrons while simultaneously detecting the remaining nucleus. Our measurements help guide and verify modern models of the nucleus. Additionally, our work at LANSCE focuses on understanding the details of how our neutron detectors work by using a beam of neutrons to interact with them. We measure properties such as the neutrons’ scattering pattern and energy which we will use to improve simulations of neutron interactions.”

Professor Kuchera is the only pre-tenure (and youngest) faculty member of the Modular Neutron Array (MoNA) collaboration at NSCL and serves as Executive Director. We congratulate him on his accomplishments, and this competitive NSF grant.

The Office of Grants and Contracts congratulates Professor Emeritus of Physics, Wolfgang Christian and Professor and Chair of Physics, Mario Belloni on receipt of the Excellence in Physics Education Award from the American Physical Society.

The Open Source Physics Project (OSP) team was recognized for their “sustained commitment to computational physics education through creating and disseminating programming environments, books, software, simulations, and other tools to support computational thinking, and for research, establishing the value of these tools and the best practices for their use.”

The Open Source Physics Team members are: Wolfgang Christian (Project PI), Lyle Barbato, Mario Belloni, Douglas Brown, Thomas Colbert, Anne J. Cox, Melissa Dancy, Francisco Esquembre, Kyle Forinash, Michael R. Gallis, Felix J. Garcia, Harvey Gould, William Junkin, Bruce Mason, Todd Timberlake, Aaron Titus, Jan Tobochnik, & Loo Kang Wee. 

The OSP Project began with a 2002 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant awarded to Davidson Professors Christian and Belloni to develop interactive Java applet-based curricular material known as Physlets.  A second NSF grant (NSF DUE 0442581) awarded in 2005, “OPTIC: Open Physics Technology for Interactive Curricula,” supported rewriting Physlet code into an open source library, for a Java edition of An Introduction to Computer Simulation Methods.  Interest in computational physics attracted additional educational authors, tools and simulations resulting in an OSP-based digital library serving over 200,000 users.  Additional information may be found here.

The Office of Grants and Contracts congratulates Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, Tabitha Peck, on a National Science Foundation CAREER award (1942146).

The $549,997 grant will support the project titled “Virtual Body Ownership Illusions for Bias Reduction and Fostering Inclusivity in STEM Classrooms.”  The goal of this 5-year project is to create an environment where STEM education is available for all students and that no student has to face prohibitive barriers to major in a STEM discipline.

One of the outcomes of the project will be a publicly accessible open-source VR application that can be inexpensively deployed on commercially available VR hardware with curriculum guidelines for distribution across the world. The research will involve collaborations with UNC Charlotte and Alamance Community College and will fund the participation of 15 undergraduate research students from Davidson who will develop VR applications, run experiments, write research papers, attend international research conferences, and present research findings.

Additionally, Professor Peck has assembled a robust advisory board consisting of Dr. Robert Bodenheimer of Vanderbilt University, Dr. Benjamin Lok of the University of Florida, and Drs. Jess Good, Barbara Lom, Fuji Lozada and Kristi Multhaup of Davidson College.

The CAREER is NSF’s most prestigious research award, with the vast majority of awardees being at large research-intensive universities.  Professor Peck’s accomplishment is especially notable since it follows her successful collaboration with North Carolina State University on the 2018 NSF grant (1760831) “Pre-service Educators Reimagining Core Experiences in Physics Teaching,” featured here.