Prize Recipient

Paul L. J. Guèye
Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, Michigan State University

"For many seminal experimental contributions to understanding the structure of nuclear particles and decades of service to physics outreach, diversity and inclusion, particularly throughout the African diaspora."

Prof. Paul Guèye received his BS (1987) and MS (1990) in Physics and Chemistry from the University Cheikh Anta Diop (Dakar, Senegal), and his Ph.D. (1994) in Nuclear Physics from the University of Clermont-Ferrand II (Aubière, France). His thesis focused on electron/positron scattering experiments at the CEA Saclay linear accelerator to probe higher order corrections to the Born Approximation using carbon and lead nuclei. He then joined the nuclear physics group of Hampton University (Hampton, Virginia, USA) as a postdoc and was part of the first sets of experiments conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy funded Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Newport News, Virginia, USA). Prof. Guèye joined the MoNA Collaboration in 2013 to study neutron unbound nuclei through low energy nuclear physics experiments at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams/National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (East Lansing, Michigan, USA). He was the Chair of the HU Physics Department from 2015-2018. He joined MSU in the Fall 2018. Some of his accomplishments include the validation of the effective momentum approximation in electron scattering, development of the JLab/Hall C arc energy drift correction tool for its nuclear physics program, development of a silicon-beryllium segmented target at NSCL and several scintillating fiber-based detectors for medical applications that lead to commercially available systems. Prof. Guèye has been and is still actively engaged in various national and international organizations such as: Chair of the Liaison Committee for Under-Represented Minorities of the American Institute of Physics, President of the National Society of Black Physicists, Executive Director of the MoNA Collaboration, Strategic Programs for Innovations in Undergraduate Physics of the American Association of Physics Teachers, Founder and Chair of the Minority Sub-Committee of the American Association for Physicists in Medicine and African Strategy for Fundamental and Applied Physics amongst others. Prof. Guèye was recognized by President Barack Obama in 2015 for some of his work.

Jami Valentine Miller (Chair), USPTO; Mario Borunda OK State Clayton Simien UAB Sowjanya Gollapinni LANL Chanda Prescod-Weinstein UNH