Department of Physics at the U of I

Professor Naomi Makins received her bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Alberta in 1989, and her Ph.D. in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994. She joined the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois as an assistant professor in 1997.

Since coming to Illinois, Professor Makins' principal research activities have involved the HERMES experiment at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron ( DESY) in Hamburg, Germany. The HERMES experiment, an internal polarised target experiment in the electron beam of the HERA storage ring, is an extensive program of inclusive and semi-inclusive spin-dependent deep inelastic electron/positron scattering to determine the contribution of the different quark flavors to the spin of the nucleon.

As the leader of the Monte Carlo group, Professor Makins first used elaborate Monte Carlo simulations of the physics and the detector to search for ways to enhance the gluon signal of the HERMES data, in order to address directly the very important issue of the gluon contribution to nucleon spin. She succeeded in establishing the physics case for a significant upgrade to the detector and took on the additional job of designing and constructing a major piece of the detector upgrade. Since January 1999, Professor Makins has been the analysis coordinator for the entire experiment.