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Group Members

Dr. Nirupama Sensharma – Postdoctoral Fellow

Nirupama Sensharma joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Postdoctoral Associate in May 2021. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in Physics followed by a master’s degree in Nuclear Science and Technology, both from the University of Delhi in India. She joined the University of Notre Dame, Indiana in 2015 as a graduate student and obtained a second master’s degree in Physics in 2018. She completed her PhD in Nuclear physics in 2021 with her research primarily focusing on the use of gamma spectroscopic techniques to study the exotic phenomena of wobbling motion and chiral rotation exhibited by triaxial nuclei. The title of her PhD thesis was Wobbling motion in nuclei: Transverse, Longitudinal and Chiral.

As a graduate student, Nirupama has received various awards such as the Graduate Research and Dissertation Award and the Cornelius P. Browne Memorial Award in Nuclear Physics awarded by the Department of Physics at the University of Notre Dame to name a few.Nirupama has a keen interest in promoting knowledge and awareness about peaceful Nuclear Energy within society. She has developed and started an initiative Nuclear Energy – The Better Energy wherein the public is introduced to nuclear energy and its applications through an interactive platform. Within this initiative, she supervises an international team of 8 members to organize informational campaigns and outreach events. She also serves as the Editor-in-chief of a bimonthly magazine and regularly writes/edits articles published by the team.

Selected Publications:
  1. N. Sensharma, U. Garg, Q. B. Chen, S. Frauendorf, D. P. Burdette, J. L. Cozzi, et al.,Longitudinal wobbling motion in 187Au. Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 052501 (2020).
  2. N. Sensharma, U. Garg, S. Zhu, A. D. Ayangeakaa, S. Frauendorf, W. Li, G. H. Bhat, et al., Two– phonon wobbling in 135Pr. Phys. Lett. B 792, 170 (2019).
  3. Y. K. Gupta, B. K. Nayak, U. Garg, K. Hagino, K. B. Howard, N. Sensharma, et al.,Determination of hexadecapole (β4) deformation of the light-mass nucleus 24Mg using quasi-elastic measurement. Phys. Lett. B 806, 135473 (2020).

 

Stephen Alexander Yates – Graduate Student

Stephen Yates was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts.  He discovered his love of science watching Bill Nye the Science Guy and building vacuum-tube phonograph amplifiers with his father.  Stephen graduated from Duke University with a B.S. in Physics with departmental distinction and a second B.S. in Economics.  As an undergraduate, Stephen worked with Dr. Calvin Howell at Duke’s High-Intensity Gamma Source to analyze neutron spectra using linearly polarized gamma rays near 15.8 MeV, incident on Selenium-80.  Stephen’s research demonstrated a new method for predicting total cross-sections and level densities from angular correlations of neutron spectra and is published in Physical Review C. (https://journals.aps.org/prc/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevC.98.054621)

For a Classics minor, Stephen researched the Roman sculptures excavated at the Baths of Caracalla.  He spent a summer learning Portuguese at the University of Coimbra.  Stephen is now a first-year Physics PhD candidate at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.  In his rapidly-dwindling spare time, Stephen enjoys working out, playing jazz on the bass guitar, and competing with his friends in the strategy games Civilization and Diplomacy.

 

Antonella Saracino – Graduate Student

Antonella was born and raised in Italy. In 2019, she obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Physics at the University of Bari “Aldo Moro” with a thesis titled “Study about the performances of the silicon pixel detector ALPIDE as an intra- operative probe for oncological radiosurgery”. This work was performed as part of the “ALICE” collaboration. In July 2021, after a six month internship at the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble (FR), she received her Master’s degree at University of Milan “La Statale” with the thesis “Structure of the 161Gd nucleus populated in neutron capture reactions on a highly isotopically enriched target”. She is currently a graduate student at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

She always tried to build the wider background she could in physics, however her main interest concerns experimental nuclear physics and data analysis. Antonella enjoys cooking, cinema, arts, fashion, traveling, swimming and climbing.

 

Tyler Kowalewski – Graduate Student

Tyler was born and grew up in Buffalo, New York. In 2021, He received his undergraduate degree in physics and mathematics, summa cum laude, from Houghton College in Houghton, New York. His undergraduate research and thesis focused on developing new methods to measure light-ion fusion cross sections using inertial confinement fusion, and the design, construction, and testing of scintillation detectors to be used in high-yield D-T fusion experiments. Tyler’s interests include inertial confinement fusion research, experimental and theoretical nuclear physics, and particle physics. When not studying physics, he loves to hike, travel, and build hobbyist computers.