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.

Through a one-of-a-kind experiment at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, nuclear physicists have precisely measured the weak interaction between protons and neutrons. The result quantifies the weak force theory as predicted by the Standard Model of Particle Physics.

A team of scientists has for the first time measured the elusive weak interaction between protons and neutrons in the nucleus of an atom. They had chosen the simplest nucleus consisting of one neutron and one proton for the study.