Assistant Professors Jessie Shelton and Benjamin Hooberman of the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have been selected for 2017 DOE Early Career Awards. They are among 65 early-career scientists nationwide to receive the five-year awards through the Department of Energy Office of Science’s Early Career Research Program, now in its second year. According to the DOE, this year’s awardees were selected from a pool of about 1,150 applicants, working in research areas identified by the DOE as high priorities for the nation.
Written by Siv Schwink
Assistant Professors Jessie Shelton and Benjamin Hooberman of the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have been selected for 2017 DOE Early Career Awards. They are among 65 early-career scientists nationwide to receive the five-year awards through the Department of Energy Office of Science’s Early Career Research Program, now in its second year. According to the DOE, this year’s awardees were selected from a pool of about 1,150 applicants, working in research areas identified by the DOE as high priorities for the nation.
Illinois Physics Professor Benjamin HoobermanHooberman is an experimental high energy particle physicist working with the ATLAS experiment, a large-scale collaboration of more than 3,000 scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator at CERN, Switzerland. In his research, he mines huge quantities of data obtained from millions of particle collisions, to uncover new physics beyond the standard model. His research group also contributed to the development of an upgraded ATLAS charged particle tracking detector and trigger systems, having performed extensive simulation studies to help guide the new design.
Hooberman specializes in the search for supersymmetric particles and evidence of extra dimensions of spacetime. In this same context, he is also working on one of the greatest puzzles in physics today—dark matter. The standard model, our best working model of the universe, falls short of explaining dark matter. Understanding the nature of physics beyond the standard model and its potential connection to dark matter is among the highest priorities of the LHC physics program and the focus of Hooberman’s research. A discovery would transform our understanding of the composition and fundamental laws of the universe.
Hooberman received a bachelor's degree in physics from Columbia University in 2005 and a doctoral degree in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2009. From 2009 to 2014, he held a postdoctoral appointment at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, working as a member of the CMS collaboration at the LHC. He joined the faculty of Physics Illinois in 2014. He is a recipient of the CMS/LHC Physics Center Fellowship from Fermi Lab in 2013.
Illinois Physics Professor Jessie SheltonShelton is a theoretical high energy particle physicist. Her research focuses on a broad range of unsolved problems in particle physics beyond the standard model. She uses the formal aspects of particle phenomenology, coupled with big data from particle accelerators, to generate mathematical models of the nature of matter and dark matter. She is particularly interested in dark matter, top quarks, and the Higgs boson. Her recent work has also focused on the physics of black-hole p-wave dark matter annihilation.
Shelton received a bachelor’s degree in physics from Princeton University in 2000 and a doctoral degree in physics from MIT in 2006. She held postdoctoral appointments at Rutgers, Yale, and Harvard before joining the faculty at Physics Illinois in 2014. She is the recipient of MIT’s Andrew M. Lockett Award for Excellence in Theoretical Physics (2006) and the LHC Theory Initiative Travel and Computing Award (2011).
Madeline Stover is a physics doctoral student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign studying atmospheric dynamics applied to forest conservation. She interns as a science writer for Illinois Physics, where she also co-hosts the podcast Emergence along with fellow physics graduate student Mari Cieszynski. When Stover is not doing research or communications, she enjoys hosting her local radio show, singing with her band, and cooking with friends.
Daniel Inafuku graduated from Illinois Physics with a PhD and now works as a science writer. At Illinois, he conducted scientific research in mathematical biology and mathematical physics. In addition to his research interests, Daniel is a science video media creator.
Karmela Padavic-Callaghan, Ph. D. is a science writer and an educator. She teaches college and high school physics and mathematics courses, and her writing has been published in popular science outlets such as WIRED, Scientific American, Physics World, and New Scientist. She earned a Ph. D. in Physics from UIUC in 2019 and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Jamie Hendrickson is a writer and content creator in higher education communications. They earned their M.A. in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2021. In addition to their communications work, they are a published area studies scholar and Russian-to-English translator.
Garrett R. Williams is an Illinois Physics Ph.D. Candidate and science writer. He has been recognized as the winner of the 2020 APS History of Physics Essay Competition and as a finalist in the 2021 AAAS Science and Human Rights Essay Competition. He was also an invited author in the 2021 #BlackinPhysics Week series published by Physics Today and Physics World.
Karmela Padavic-Callaghan, Ph. D. is a science writer and an educator. She teaches college and high school physics and mathematics courses, and her writing has been published in popular science outlets such as WIRED, Scientific American, Physics World, and New Scientist. She earned a Ph. D. in Physics from UIUC in 2019 and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.