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Thu, 23 Mar 2017 19:47:27 +0000

'Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Proton' is topic of Losoncy Lecture Series March 30 admin Thu, 03/23/2017 - 15:47 March 23, 2017
READING, Pa. — In the sixth annual George J. Losoncy Lecture in Physics and Astronomy, Alexey Prokudin, assistant professor of physics at Penn State Berks, will give a presentation titled “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Proton,” from 4:30–5:30 p.m. Thursday, March 30, in the Perkins Student Center Auditorium.

This event is free and open to the public, and it will be preceded by a reception in the Freyberger Gallery, in the Perkins Student Center, at 4 p.m., where light refreshments will be served.

The talk is the sixth in the annual lecture series named in honor of George Losoncy, who was a dedicated Penn State Berks employee working in maintenance and operations for 17 years, serving the college with perfect attendance, and donating 182 unused sick days when he retired in 2009. During his time working in the Luerssen Science Building, Losoncy struck up a friendship with several members of the physics faculty and became particularly interested in physics and astronomy. Upon his retirement, he donated $50,000 to set up a research endowment in physics and astronomy at Penn State Berks.

Prokudin is a dynamic physicist and professor who is highly regarded in the international nuclear physics community. In this lecture, he will discuss the three-dimensional structure of the building blocks of matter — the proton and the neutron. With his lively and engaging style, Prokudin stresses the bigger concepts of his research and makes these concepts accessible to all audiences.

Recently awarded a prestigious individual National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Undergraduate Institution grant for his project titled “RUI: Three-dimensional structure of the nucleon in QCD” totaling $150,000, Prokudin will use the funding to conduct research with Penn State Berks students, to support student travel to conferences, and to purchase equipment for the college.

Prokudin earned his doctorate from the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, Russia, in 2000. Prior to joining Penn State, he had impressive research experience, first as a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Turin in Italy, then working at the National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Turin, for eight years, and finally as staff scientist at the Theory Center of Jefferson National Accelerator Facility for six years.

In August 2015, he joined the faculty at Penn State Berks as an assistant professor of physics. This position is a bridge appointment with Jefferson Lab, and Penn State Berks is the only undergraduate higher education institution to receive a JLab grant for a bridge position. The goal of this bridge position is to strengthen nuclear physics research conducted in the United States by facilitating collaborations between Jefferson Lab and faculty at research universities, and thereby assure the long-term continuity of that research stream.

For more information about this lecture or the Losoncy Lecture Series, contact Leonard Gamberg, professor of physics, at 610-396-6124 or LPG10@psu.edu.