News Archives - Physics & Astronomy

The Sun, the sky, the seasons: What’s it all about? Come find out!

September 21, 2026

Astronomical seasons in the northern hemisphere, a color chart from NOAA tracking solstices and equinoxes

This event has been canceled: Please check back for updates on planetarium shows!

Come celebrate and learn about the Autumnal Equinox at the UT planetarium!

On Friday, September 25, Teaching Professor Sean Lindsay will show the connection between the Sun, the sky, and the seasons. Watching the annual patterns in the sky gave rise to myths that connect humanity to the stars and gave us the power to construct calendars and predict seasonal events. Experience other cultures’ connection to the sky with full-dome short films from the One Sky Project. Stay until the end for a live sky demonstration and a question-and-answer session!

The event is free but due to limited seating reservations are required. Reserve your spot!

When: Friday, September 25, 2026
Where: UT Planetarium, Nielsen Physics Building, Room 108
Who: All ages
Cost: Free (Reservations required)
Time: Doors open at 7:45 p.m.; program starts at 8 p.m. and is 90 minutes long
Parking: Volunteer Hall Parking Garage on White Avenue. Temporary accessible parking be available on Circle Drive (near Dabney-Buehler Hall) and in the Perkins Hall lot (accessed from Middle Drive).

A SULI Summer for Physics Undergraduates

September 9, 2026

Physics majors are back in class this fall, many of them returning with a summer’s worth of research experience. Six of our undergraduates spent their summer break working on physics projects at national laboratories through the Department of Energy (DOE) Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) program.

SULI places students at 17 participating DOE laboratories and facilities to work with mentors on initiatives supporting the agency’s mission. The program gives undergraduates an opportunity to try out different areas of science, see how research is done at state-of-the-art facilities, and earn a stipend while expanding their professional networks.

Meet our Summer 2026 SULI Alumni!

Allie Dabney

Senior from Murfreesboro, Tennessee

SULI Site: Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York

Project: Dark sector searches for the Future Circular Collider

Mentor: Elizabeth Brost

Internship Highlight(s): The best part of my SULI experience was connecting with my mentor, Liza Brost. She has taught me so much about physics research and possibilities in the career field. Liza is someone who I look up to as a role model for my future.

Langa Lunga

Sophomore from Knoxville, Tennessee

SULI Site: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA

Project: Cryogenic Characterization of a 28nm Chip for Device Characterization

In general terms I focused on testing microchips in extreme temperatures for their applications in dark matter and quantum computing experiments. I assisted in the debugging of the ASIC chip board at room temperature first and with the creation of an automated test bench that will run experiments autonomously in the cold environments, which at SLAC get down to 77 K and at LBNL (our collaborating lab) gets down to 4K.

Note: Langa finished first at SLAC and second nationwide in the 2026 IGNITE off! Competition among more than 135 competitors.

Mentor: Aldo Pena Perez

Internship Highlight(s): “Curiosity and optimism are the keys to the doors of success.” I feel like this quote is very fitting for my time at SLAC as I tried to live by it as much as possible. In doing so, I’ve been able to meet incredible scientists working on groundbreaking research, entrepreneurs who’ve raised and invested millions of dollars into companies, and ambitious peers like me seeking to make their own mark in the world. By being curious about other people and optimistic (about) their willingness to speak with me, I’ve learned an incredible amount in such a short time.

Amelia Sandoval

Senior from Knoxville, Tennessee

SULI Site: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico

Project: My project was focused on analyzing simulated background particle hits on ePIC detectors for the development of an advanced silicon detector for the upcoming Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). My group is working on an advanced silicon detector called the Fast MAPS Tracker (FMT) which aims to improve the precision of the current simulated detectors that the ePIC collaboration has developed. The FMT specializes in separating background events from the individual bunch crossings due to its high timing resolution of 2 ns.

My part of this project involved plotting various distributions from the Geant4 ePIC simulated background hit files by using reference detectors located close to the proposed FMT locations due to the fact that the FMT is not a part of the ePIC simulation yet. These distributions yielded important information about the background, such as the expected hit rate per event over one FMT sensor, spatial distributions of the background, and the particle composition of the background. All of this information will be scaled to the FMT timing window and input into a detector performance study so that my group can do a standalone simulation. Over the course of this project, I greatly improved my understanding of coding, and I learned how to use ROOT, which will be invaluable in the future. I am so thankful that I got this opportunity and I am excited to see where this project goes!

Mentor: Xuan Li

Internship Highlight(s): The best part about my SULI experience was that I got to spend 10 weeks doing what I want my career to be in the future: doing research at a national lab.

Dylan Stewart

Post-Grad (Bachelor’s in Physics, Spring 2026) from Knoxville, Tennessee

SULI Site: Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Project: Minimizing Uncertainty on Particle Energy Measurements in the Nab Experiment

During my appointment at the Nab experiment, I contributed to the development of one of the world’s most precise neutron decay experiments. Precision measurements of neutron decay provide a stringent test of the best theory describing fundamental particles and forces. Discrepancies between experimental results and theoretical predictions could point to previously undiscovered physics, making it essential to reduce experimental uncertainties that could obscure evidence of new physics. My research focused on improving the reliability, precision, and efficiency of the Nab experiment by reducing systematic uncertainties that could affect its measurements. I implemented new control systems for the detector calibration hardware and the high-voltage power supply, replacing outdated and error-prone procedures while automating key aspects of the experiment. I also developed optimization algorithms for detector calibration to determine the optimal configuration for each detector channel, improving the accuracy of energy measurements while reducing unwanted electronic noise.

In addition, I investigated how changes in the experiment’s magnetic field affect the angle at which protons strike the detector. By combining these measurements with detector simulations, I demonstrated that this technique provides a powerful new method for studying energy losses at the detector surface and used it to identify previously unrecognized damage in the experiment’s upper detector. These findings directly improved the collaboration’s understanding of an important source of systematic uncertainty. Together, these contributions improved the Nab experiment’s accuracy, automation, and reliability, strengthening its ability to collect the years of high-quality data needed to achieve its precision goals. Through this appointment, I gained experience in detector instrumentation, detector calibration, optimization algorithms, data analysis, simulation, and collaborative scientific research, strengthening the technical and professional skills needed for a career in experimental physics.

Mentor: Wolfgang Schreyer

Internship Highlight(s): Unlike other research experiences that I’ve gotten to do, SULI is unique in the amount of professional development, lectures, and workshops that were put together for us interns to attend outside of our own research projects. I had a lot of cool opportunities to learn not just about other areas of science but real technical skills that contributed to my ability to produce high-quality research.

Evan Toon

Senior from Knoxville, Tennessee

SULI Site: Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Project: At the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR), future polarized Neutron Macromolecular Crystallography (NMC) studies are in need of a new Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP) enhanced sample space to enable the accurate determination of hydrogen locations within protein structures of interest, as polarized NMC can greatly increase the signal to noise ratio and significantly shorten the data acquisition time for these neutron diffraction measurements. Mapping these hydrogen positions is essential for understanding biological function and molecular interactions and can drive advancements in structural biology and pharmaceutical research.

My work included the installation and commissioning of the major components required for this DNP enhanced sample space. Specifically, a new 1 K cryostat, 5 T superconducting magnet, microwave transmission, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) electronics, and a new cryogenic sample space capable of positioning protein crystals in multiple orientations for thorough neutron diffraction measurements. Integrating this new DNP instrument along the IMAGINE-X beamline will enable upcoming and highly anticipated protein crystallography studies by providing various samples of interest the high degree of nuclear polarization required to accurately determine the hydrogen locations throughout the crystalline lattice.

Mentor: Josh Pierce

Internship Highlight(s): The best part of my SULI experience was seeing how the physics I learned in the classroom comes together in a real experiment while working alongside various other scientists, engineers, and technicians who make this cutting edge research possible. It showed me what large scale research at a national laboratory truly looks like and reinforced that this is absolutely the career I want to pursue.

Material Results for the Quantum Ecosystem

August 27, 2026

Public Lecture on Quantum Mechanics

August 12, 2026

Everyone is welcome to a public lecture presented by Professor Norman Mannella on Saturday, August 22, from 10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m.

What’s this talk about?

Quantum Mechanics: A Centennial Story (1925-2025)

The year 2025 marked 100 years since the birth of quantum mechanics, one of the most profound intellectual achievements in human history. This talk will retrace the extraordinary first 30 years of the quantum revolution, following the discoveries that revealed the strange and fascinating behavior of atoms, electrons, and light, and through the stories of scientists who challenged conventional wisdom and transformed our understanding of reality.

Where is it?

Institute of Advanced Materials and Manufacturing (IAMM)

Room 147

2641 Osprey Vista Way

Knoxville, TN 37920

When is it?

Saturday, August 22, 2026, from 10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m.

How do I sign up?

Space is limited, and registration is required. We strongly encourage you to register early to secure your spot.

For any questions, please contact Chodge8@utk.edu.

Brandi Skipworth Wins GATE Fellowship

July 16, 2026

Physics Graduate Student Brandi Skipworth is one of 10 graduate research assistants selected for a 2026-2027 Graduate Advancement Training and Education (GATE) fellowship. These UT Oak Ridge Innovation Institute (UTORII) awards support students involved in research affiliated with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Skipworth is working with the microelectronics lab in ORNL’s Physics Division to look for physics Beyond the Standard Model, the long-understood arrangement of particles and forces that describes how our universe works. She is part of Associate Professor Tova Holmes’s research group and is helping build tools to expand this framework. Her ORNL Advisor is Mathieu Benoit.

Skipworth is looking for “partner particles” predicted by supersymmetry, which could help explain phenomena that don’t fit the traditional model. To find them requires sophisticated tracking technologies. Her GATE project is “AI-Assisted Machine Vision for Tracker Module Assembly” and will take advantage of artificial intelligence to assemble, test, and calibrate high-density silicon detector modules at ORNL.

“My goal is to set up a reliable, well-documented process at ORNL for building and testing these silicon detector components so the lab can produce them consistently for future experiments,” she explained. “On a personal level, this fellowship rounds out my training by adding hands-on hardware experience to my software and analysis background and prepares me to lead detector development for future colliders.”

Skipworth earned a bachelor’s degree from the department in 2021 and won the prestigious Douglas V. Roseberry Award, the department’s top undergraduate honor. She joined the physics graduate program and in 2025 the department recognized her with the Fowler-Marion Award for her outstanding scholarship, research, and citizenship contributions.

“Brandi has consistently thrown herself at every new opportunity presented in graduate school, and she’s developed skills across teaching, computing, and scientific reasoning,” Holmes said. “I’m thrilled for her to get this chance to expand her expertise even further with this exciting project developing new tools to make the hardware required for our experiments to run.”

The GATE fellowship supports a 12-month appointment, including a $37,000 stipend, tuition waiver, fees, and health insurance. Skipworth is the 10^th physics graduate student to win a GATE Fellowship in the past six years.

Research Rock Stars: Thomas Papenbrock Explores the Forces at the Core of Matter

June 23, 2026

Rules for Nuclear Couples

June 10, 2026

Atoms are governed by nuclei and nuclei have rules of their own. Physicists like Assistant Professor Dien Nguyen study those rules. In a just-published Nature paper, she and colleagues report on a new quantum selection process that could impact how scientists understand nuclear structure, which plays a major role in fields like medicine and energy.

How Particles Pick Partners

A nucleus is a quantum system made up of protons and neutrons (nucleons), held together by the strong nuclear force. At very short distances, those nucleons can double up momentarily into short-range correlated (SRC) pairs.

“SRC pairs play an important role in helping us understand how protons and neutrons interact at very short distances inside the nucleus,” Nguyen explained. “This nucleon-nucleon interaction is what binds protons and neutrons together and determines many properties of the nucleus.”

An image in blue, red, and purple of calcium and iron protons and neutrons, including a schematic of electron scattering. — Calcium-40, Calcium-48, and Iron-54 (protons in blue; neutrons in red). Lower right: a schematic of an electron (purple) scattering off a nucleus and emitting a virtual photon (purple), which knocks out a proton (blue) from a correlated neutron-proton pair in the nucleus.

To find out how these partnerships form, she and the research team scattered electrons from calcium (Ca-40 and Ca-48) and iron (Fe-54) targets at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, detecting both scattered electrons and knocked-out protons. Nguyen said the three nuclei chosen were a special collection based on how their protons and neutrons are arranged in discrete energy levels, or “shells.”

“Calcium-40 and calcium-48 have the same number of protons, but calcium-48 has eight additional neutrons in an outer shell,” she said. “Calcium-48 and iron-54 have the same number of neutrons, but iron-54 has six additional protons in the same outer shell. This comparison allowed us to separate the effect of adding neutrons from the effect of adding protons in a specific shell.”

The six additional protons in iron translated into some surprising results.

Nguyen explained that adding eight neutrons (40 percent) in calcium-48 resulted in only about 10 percent more SRC proton pairs over calcium-40. Adding six protons (30 percent) in iron-54, however, led to about 50 percent more SRC proton pairing compared to calcium-48. She said the results show that pair formation isn’t controlled simply by the total number of protons or neutrons.

“Instead, it depends strongly on the quantum orbitals that the protons and neutrons occupy,” she said. “In other words, nucleons are much more likely to form SRC pairs when their quantum states are favorable.”

She added that the results point to a new kind of quantum selection rule governing how nucleons can pair at short distances.

“It was not known before and could have an important impact on how we understand nuclear structure, especially how protons and neutrons interact and organize themselves inside the nucleus,” Nguyen explained.

Meaning in Every Achievement

Nguyen is the first author on the Nature paper and worked with the CaFe team (as they call themselves) to lead the project. They took the first data in late August 2022, when she was a Nathan Isgur Fellow at Jefferson Lab and a week away from delivering her daughter. A good friend and fellow CaFe member had a two-month-old baby at the time, and Nguyen said the two young moms made a pact.

“We said to each other ‘Let’s get the first paper out before our kids turn four,’” she said. “And we did it: we kept our promise with our babies.”

(For Nguyen there was an additional bonus: her husband promised her an upscale “CaFe” machine for morning coffee if they published in Nature, which he’s made good on.)

She is quick to acknowledge the research success is shared among the entire CaFe team, Jefferson Lab’s Hall C collaboration, including physics graduate and paper co-author Casey Morean (PhD, ’23).

“I am truly grateful to everyone who helped bring the project to this point,” Nguyen said.

Publishing in Nature is the latest in a string of successes she’s earned since joining the physics faculty in 2024. In 2025 she won a U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Award to support her research on how spin shapes the fundamental structure of matter. In 2026 she was recognized with the UT College of Arts and Sciences Excellence in Research and Creative Achievement Award (Early Career). She’s also deeply invested in helping her students succeed and has been voted the department’s Research Advisor of the Year by both the graduate students (2025) and the undergraduate physics majors (2026).

“For me, professional life is my passion and it always goes along with my personal life and with my loved ones,” she said. “So (the) personal part is meaningful to me (in) every achievement.”

Reconciling Fundamental Physics

June 1, 2026

Assistant Professor Haocun Yu is something of a scientific diplomat. In a recent Physical Review Letters (PRL) publication, she and colleagues show how a tabletop experiment can bring together two bedrock physics theories that have never been fully reconciled.

Subatomic Gravity?

More than a century ago Albert Einstein gave us the theory of general relativity, describing gravity in relation to space and time on large scales. Within a decade, physicists were developing a deeper knowledge of quantum mechanics: the laws that govern the subatomic world, including atoms, photons, and other microscopic systems.

“Quantum mechanics and general relativity are two of the most successful theories in physics, but they describe nature in very different ways,” Yu explained. “To understand nature at its deepest level, we need experiments that probe where these two frameworks overlap. Studying gravitational effects in genuinely quantum systems can help reveal whether the two theories remain fully compatible in that regime, and it may point the way toward new physics.”

She said the challenge in those studies is that compared to other physical effects, gravity is “extraordinarily weak” at the scale of single quantum particles. This gives it an extremely small signature that’s difficult to gauge. To overcome that obstacle, she and colleagues built a highly-stable 50-kilometer optical interferometer using compact fiber coils and tested it with single photons. The entire apparatus can fit on a tabletop.

An optical interferometer splits a beam of light, then recombines the resulting beams to create an interference pattern that makes precision measurements. Most lab-based interferometers lack the sensitivity required to pick up the elusive signal of gravity in a quantum system. In this experiment, the team’s unique design successfully detected a gravitationally-induced phase signal small enough to reach the regime needed for laboratory-scale measurements of gravitational redshift (a prediction of general relativity) with quantum light.

“Experiments involving both general relativity and quantum mechanics are necessarily at the cutting edge of precision measurement,” Yu explained. “Experiments simply did not have the stability, size, and phase sensitivity needed to reach that regime. Our work helps bring these tests closer to experimental reach.”

Quantum Phenomena on a Human Scale

Yu is a PhD graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the PRL research comes from her work as a Marie-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Vienna. She joined the UT Physics faculty in January 2026 and is drawing on her experience to create new research opportunities.

“I am building a quantum optics and sensing research program with broad applications, where advancing and developing new quantum tools for fundamental science is a central part of that vision,” she said.

Her work complements the department’s strong quantum science program. Physics faculty played key roles in the university’s quantum cluster hiring initiative and in securing National Science Foundation funding for the Center for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing, where they’re taming the complexity of quantum materials with artificial intelligence.

Yu is actively looking for students and postdocs to join her research group and contribute to work she said has long fascinated her.

“What especially drew me in is that fragile quantum effects can be harnessed as practical tools for precision measurement,” she said. “In return, these enhanced experiments can reveal mesoscopic and macroscopic quantum behavior in measurement devices — bringing quantum phenomena closer to human scales and advancing quantum science itself.”

Measuring What Comes Before Alpha

May 27, 2026

Illustration of alpha decay of tellurium-104 over an illustrated image of the RIBF at RIKEN — Illustration of alpha decay of tellurium-104 over the RIBF at RIKEN, Credit: Robert Grzywacz

University of Tennessee physicists and their colleagues have made critical measurements of the lifetime and decay energy of tellurium-104 (Te-104), an important step in answering a century-old question and understanding how hundreds of nuclei decay. The results are published in Nature.

A Particle Determined to Escape

Professor Robert Grzywacz led the experimental team at the Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory (RIBF) at RIKEN in Japan. He explained how the results match decades-old predictions that tellurium-104 is a special case in alpha decay, a process where an alpha particle (a strongly-bound system of two protons and two neutrons) tunnels through the barrier surrounding the nucleus where it resides. Though alpha radioactivity was discovered more than 125 years ago, where the particle comes from is still a mystery, especially in nuclei that have large numbers of protons and neutrons.

“Alpha decay is the oldest decay mode,” Grzywacz said. “The big question is how the alpha particle forms in heavy nuclei, which are known to have uniform matter distribution. There must be a mechanism which causes local ‘clump’ or ‘cluster’ formation.”

Clustering is connected to how a nucleus is structured. Called preformation, it’s a signal an alpha particle is about to make a break for it.

“Once formed,” Grzywacz explained, “the alpha particle will escape from the nucleus.”

He said that this emission is a well-understood quantum mechanical tunneling process that depends on available energy. Since the 1960s scientists have thought that one nucleus—tellurium-104—has a special enhancement that could better explain how it happens.

Following the Decay Chain

While tellurium lives among the metalloids on the periodic table and can be found in nature, the isotope tellurium-104 has to be synthesized. Creating these nuclei is a challenge for multiple reasons. First, they only live for a few nanoseconds. Second, they’re a result of the decay of xenon-108, which in itself is difficult to produce. In this experiment, the team overcame these still-formidable obstacles with technological advances at RIBF. Using four coupled cyclotrons, they accelerated a beam of xenon-124 into a beryllium target. The collision produced fragments of xenon-108, whose decay populates tellurium-104, which is followed in this decay chain by tin-100.

“We have measured the lifetime and energy of this decay and found that the preformation probability is much larger than expected based on predictions, which used available experimental knowledge,” Grzywacz said. “We also found that tellurium-104 is the shortest known alpha particle radioactive nucleus with a 7.2 nanosecond half-life. This very short half-life, corrected for decay energy, gives unusually high alpha particle preformation. It will likely be a single case like that among all nuclei.”

He added the only other case is the well-studied decay of polonium-212 to lead-208, which has preformation probability 10 times smaller than that of tellurium-104.

Grzywacz said that more than half a century ago scientists pictured tellurium-104 having a brief existence as a molecule comprising tin-100 and an alpha particle. Tin-100 is a doubly-magic nucleus, meaning it’s strongly bound, as is an alpha particle. He and the research team attribute tellurium-104’s high preformation to its relation to doubly-magic tin, creating favorable conditions to form an alpha particle.

A Trail Blazed at Oak Ridge

Years of previous studies made these findings possible. Much of that work was rooted at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), where researchers have been at the forefront of exploring the island of alpha-emitting nuclei near tin-100 for decades. In 2006, a team including Grzywacz and ORNL physicists Krzysztof Rykaczewski and Carl Gross used the Recoil Mass Spectrometer at ORNL’s historic Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility (HRIBF) to discover the neighboring xenon-109 to tellurium-105 to tin-101 alpha-decay chain. The measurement suggested that alpha-particle preformation was growing as nuclei approached doubly-magic tin-100. This strengthens the case that tellurium-104 would be the definitive test of the “superallowed” prediction, where the parent nucleus is essentially the doubly-magic plus a preformed alpha particle.

Independently, a 2018 experiment at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) achieved the first observation of the xenon-108 to tellurium-104 to tin-100 chain, though the two decays could not be fully separated, leaving the individual half-life and energy of tellurium-104 unmeasured. In parallel, the detector technology pioneered at Holifield—fast-response scintillator crystals coupled to position-sensitive photomultiplier tubes—was further developed by Grzywacz’s group and ORNL collaborators at Japan’s Advanced Science Research Center, and proved essential for the present RIKEN experiment.

Rykaczewski, a Distinguished Senior Researcher in ORNL’s Physics Division and co-spokesperson for the RIKEN experiment, played a central role in designing and executing the measurement. Toby King, a UT physics graduate now on ORNL’s staff, was instrumental in building and operating the detection system and data acquisition. Additional ORNL support came from James Allmond and Thomas Ruland, who provided supplemental equipment and on-site experimental assistance.

“The path from the Holifield discovery of the tellurium-105 decay chain to this definitive measurement of tellurium-104 spans nearly two decades of sustained effort between UT and ORNL,” Rykaczewski said. “Each step—new isotopes, new detectors, new accelerator capabilities—brought us closer to this singular nucleus.”

A Strong Foundation for Students

Ian Cox (PhD, 2024) was the paper’s lead author. Now a postdoctoral appointee with ANL, he began working on the project as an undergraduate physics major and handled most of the experimental analysis “in record time,” according to Grzywacz.

“Studying nuclei on the edge of existence presents significant challenges but can also produce profound results,” Cox said. “It has been a pleasure to start my research career with a result that can greatly impact the field.”

Following in his footsteps, current Graduate Students Nico Braukman and Donnie Hoskins (physics), as well as Benjamin Kreider (engineering) were all co-authors on the Nature publication.

“Getting exposure to the kind of work that goes into producing high-impact physics results is an important part of being a grad student,” Braukman said. “I’m glad to have had the opportunity to participate in this experiment early in my grad school career.”

Hoskins shared similar sentiments.

“As a graduate student, one of our goals is to learn and participate in research to prepare us for our futures,” he said. “Exposure in prestigious journals, like Nature, increases visibility for me as an independent scientist to set up my own research in the future with a proven strong foundation in nuclear physics.”

The experimental effort included UT Physics Research Assistant Professor Z.Y. Xu, along with partners from ORNL, RIKEN, the University of Tokyo, the University of Warsaw, the National Centre for Nuclear Research (Poland), the Universität zu Köln (Germany), Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency.

The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science and the National Science Foundation helped support this work.

Jack Peltier Wins NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

May 19, 2026

Physics Major Jack Peltier is one of 12 UT students and alumni to win a prestigious 2026 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. These competitive honors go to outstanding students pursuing graduate education in science, engineering, math and technology. Peltier is from Franklin, Tennessee, and graduated with the spring 2026 class. He will begin graduate studies at Brown University this fall.

As a freshman Peltier started making 3D-printed parts for Professor Robert Grzywacz’s group in experimental nuclear physics. His sophomore year he added data analysis to his portfolio. His work analyzing the beta-delayed neutron emission of Fluorine 25 led to a paper in Physics Letters B, where he was first author. (This project is the basis of his NSF Fellowship.) Peltier completed similar studies for Cesium 147-149 and Niobium 109-111.

“Working in his (Professor Grzywacz’s) lab has been a fantastic experience,” Peltier said. “I have had nearly complete freedom over what I am investigating at any point, without the limitations of a lack of experimental data, etc., while also receiving mentorship about the most effective ways to extract interesting results. I believe in his lab I have received the right balance of mentorship and freedom in my research to situate myself in researching what projects I find most interesting while also making an impact on the field.”

He added that one of his favorite undergraduate memories was going whitewater rafting with the Grzywacz group.

Peltier’s research experience also includes a summer working at Fermilab, testing a protype detector for the Compact Muon Solenoid outer tracker while working with Assistant Professor Larry Lee. In tandem with his physics contributions, Peltier put his second major in math to work as well. As a sophomore he joined Professor Tuoc Phan’s group, where he has focused on regularity theory for nonlinear elliptic partial differential equations. He’ll continue this work at Brown in the applied math program.

The NSF Fellowship is the latest in a string of honors for Peltier. In 2025 he won a Barry Goldwater Scholarship. In 2025 he won the physics department’s Robert Talley Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Research, while this spring he won the James W. McConnell Award for Academic Excellence.

Peltier’s NSF Fellowship is the fifth to go to a UT Physics student or graduate in the past seven years. Bachelor’s graduates Lindsey Hessler and James Rogers were also honorable mentions in this year’s cohort.

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News

A Particle Determined to Escape

Following the Decay Chain

A Trail Blazed at Oak Ridge

A Strong Foundation for Students