Xiangdong Ji: UMD Distinguished University Professor

Dr. Xiangdong Ji received his B.S. from Tongji University and his Ph.D. in 1987 from Drexel University. His research includes theoretical studies of the nucleon structure in Quantum Chromodynamics and experimental search for Dark Matter particles using liquid xenon technology. He had post-doctorial positions at the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was a junior faculty at MIT from 1991 to 1996. He is a fellow of American Physical Society (since 2000) and a recipient of the 2003 oversea outstanding young Chinese scientist award from the National Science Foundation of China.

Matthias Burkardt: Distinguished Achievement Professor at New Mexico State University

Dr. Matthias Burkardt earned his PhD in Erlangen, Germany in 1989. His primary research interest is in non-perturbative strong interaction physics and the quark/gluon (=parton) structure of hadrons and nuclei. He is particularly interested in understanding the role of non-perturbative Quantum Chromo Dynamics (QCD) from medium energy to high-energy scattering experiments. Within this area, the main focus of his recent research has been to better understand what one can actually learn from these experiments and/or related calculations. More specifically, even though mathematical expressions in terms of matrix elements of complicated operators exist to describe the outcome of a certain experiment, the complicated nature of these matrix elements often obscures the intuitive physical interpretation of results from both experiments as well as numerical simulations.

Simonetta Liuti: Research Professor, Theoretical Nuclear and Particle Physics at University of Virginia

Dr. Simonetta Liuti

Krešimir Kumerički: Associate Professor of Physics at the Faculty of Science University of Zagreb (Department of Physics)

Dr. Krešimir Kumerički defended his PhD thesis “Rare decays of K mesons” (supervisor Ivica Picek) in 1998. The focus of his research at that time was interplay of electroweak and QCD effects in various decays involving quark flavour change. In the meantime, after longer stay at Universities of Oslo and Regensburg (2005-2006), his interest shifted to studies of quark-gluon structure of nucleon as encoded by so called generalized parton distributions. This offers novel three-dimensional picture of the nucleon structure, studied at many present (CERN, Jlab) and future experimental facilities (electron-ion collider, EIC). He pioneered application of neural networks in these studies. He is also involved in studies of Large Hadron Collider phenomenology of various extensions of Standard model, in particular those that aim for explanation of small neutrino masses. He authored 29 journal papers which are cited more than 600 times (according to inSPIRE). He was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Zagreb in 2011, has mentored 10 diploma theses and is presently mentoring a PhD thesis. He teaches particle physics at undergraduate and doctoral level.

Charles Hyde: Chair, Department of Physics Eminent Scholar and University Professor of Physics

Dr. Charles Hyde served as co-spokesperson of seven past (E93-050, E99-114, E00-110, E03-106), present (E07-007, E08-025), and future 12 GeV (E12-06-114) experiments at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News VA. His Research is in nuclear physics, focussed on the topic of Compton Scattering from the proton. In this process he uses one high energy photon to hit a proton, and with a second photon we take a picture of the wiggling internal structure of the proton. An introduction to this subject for a general audience can be found on his Web Poster on Virtual Compton Scattering. Presently, he is focussing on creating 3-D images of the quarks and gluons inside the proton and the atomic nucleus by the "Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering" reaction. A technical summary can be found at http://hallaweb.jlab.org/experiment/DVCS/ He is also active in developing the design and physics motivation for a future Electron-Ion Collider. His research is currently funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, the National Science Foundation and Brookhaven National Laboratory Previous funding includes the French CNRS/IN2P3 and ANR.

Christian Weiss: Senior Staff member at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News VA

Dr. Christian Weiss

Gagik Gavalian: Staff Scientist at Jefferson Lab and Assistant Professor at Old Dominion University.

Dr. Gagik Gavalian attended Yerevan State University and graduated in 1996 with a major in Physics. He obtained his Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from the University of New Hampshire in May 2004. Gagik then served as a Post Doctoral Research Associate at Old Dominion University until 2008. He then assumed the role of Assistant Professor at Old Dominion until 2014, where he taught introductory physics and conducted research at Jefferson Lab. Gagik played an instrumental role in the Hall B data mining efforts leading to multiple publications on studies of nuclear effects in electron-nucleus scattering. Gagik joined Jefferson Lab as a staff scientist in 2014 and has been working on preparing the CLAS12 data analysis packages towards expedient analysis. He also mentors Doctoral candidates and college students. For past four years Gagik worked on implementing CLAS12 detector reconstruction packages in cloud distributed CLARA framework. CLAS12 detector was successfully commissioned in February 2017 with reconstruction software successfully tested for full data production. For the past (2017-2018) year Gagik was leading effort in development of physics analysis software for CLAS12 experimental data.