December 1, 2021
Nadia Fomin concentrates on the fundamentals. In her research, that’s the building blocks of matter: nucleons and their constituents, quarks. In her commitment to the nuclear physics community, that’s encouraging scientific collaboration and creating student opportunities. For her dedication to physics in the South, the Southeastern Section of the American Physical Society (SESAPS) awarded her the Francis G. Slack at the 2021 meeting.
The Slack Award recognizes scientists who work unselfishly to raise the region’s stature in physics through research, university service, outreach, and support for organizations and conferences. Fomin, an associate professor who joined the physics faculty in 2013, has thrown her energy into these endeavors from the outset. She volunteered to take leadership roles in SESAPS and the American Physical Society Division of Nuclear Physics (APS-DNP) and was elected to the SESAPS executive committee her first semester at UT. She hosted the section’s 2018 meeting and in 2020 put together a virtual meeting so the conference wouldn’t be cancelled during the pandemic. She organized the 2019 National Nuclear Physics Summer School, where students and postdocs from across the country came to Knoxville to learn about the opportunities in nuclear physics and where the field is headed. Two of her students won Department of Energy Graduate Student Research awards in 2020 for their work with her group. Recognizing the strength of diversity, Fomin sought and won funding for NPET (Nuclear Physics in Eastern Tennessee), a project that launched this year and encourages undergraduate students from minority serving institutions to pursue nuclear physics through mentorship from UT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory physicists.
Read more at phys.utk.edu.