Brief Vita

• Divisional Dean for Natural Sciences and Mathematics, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Tennessee (2023-Present)
• Professor of Physics, University of Tennessee (2017-Present)
• Associate Professor of Physics, University of Tennessee (2012-2017)
• Assistant Professor of Physics, University of Tennessee (2006-2012)
• Post Doc, Rutgers University, working in the Nuclear Astrophysics group, ORNL (2002-2006)
• Post Doc, LAND group, GSI, Darmstadt, Germany (2000-2001)
• Assistant Consultant Engineer, Alan Saunders Associates, Winchester, England (1996-1997)
• PhD Experimental Nuclear Physics, University of Surrey, England (1997-2000)
• BSc (Hons) Physics with Acoustics, University of Surrey, England (1992-1996)

Selected Honors

• Fellow of the American Physical Society (2018)
• ORNL Research Award and ORNL Director’s Award (2010)
• Department of Energy Outstanding Junior Investigator Award (2009)
• Lindemann Trust Fellow (2003)

Research

Nuclear Astrophysics/Nuclear Structure

I use direct nuclear reactions to extract information about the structure of the atomic nucleus, which can aid in understanding nucleosynthetic processes that occur in the cosmos. Many of these studies have been performed on short-lived nuclei around doubly-magic ¹³²Sn. This region is important as the nuclear shell structure influences the path of the rapid neutron capture (r-) process, which is responsible for the production of roughly half of the elements heavier than iron. Other projects I’m working on include studying resonant reactions in light neutron-deficient nuclei, important in nova nucleosynthesis and X-ray bursts. I am leading efforts to develop proton-transfer reactions to be used with radioactive ion beams and developing an advanced scintillator array for gamma-ray measurements, HAGRiD.

Links

• ORNL Nuclear Structure and Astrophysics

Creative Teaching

Professor Jones taught Physics 341, a requirement for all students of nuclear engineering and an upper-level physics elective. She was concerned about the lack of fit between a 1988 text and current research in the field. To remedy this, she revised the course structure to incorporate group research projects, so that students could extend the foundational material in the text by investigating and sharing current ideas and research in the field of nuclear physics.

Recent and Notable Publications

Google Scholar Profile

• Status of experimental knowledge on the unbound nucleus ¹³Be. K.L Jones, J. Kovoor, and R. Kanungo, Front. Phys 11, 1242668, 2023.
• Structure studies of ¹³Be from the ¹²Be(d,p) reaction in inverse kinematics on a solid deuteron target. J. Kovoor, K.L. Jones, J. Hooker, M. Vostinar, R. Kanungo, S.D. Pain, M. Alcorta, J. Allen, C. Andreoiu, L. Atar, D.W. Bardayan, S.S. Bhattacharjee, D. Blankstein, C. Burbadge, S. Burcher, W.N. Catford, S. Cha, K. Chae, D. Connolly, B. Davids, N.E. Esker, F.H. Garcia, S. Gillespie, R. Ghimire, A. Gula, G. Hackman, S. Hallam, M. Hellmich, J. Henderson, M. Holl, P. Jassal, S. King, T. Knight, R. Kruecken, A. Lepailleur, J. Liang, L.Morrison, P.D. O’Malley, X. Pereira-Lopez, A. Psaltis, A. Radich, J.Refsgaard, A.C. Shotter, M. Williams, and O.Workman, Phys. Rev. C 108, 034601, 2023.
• Neutron transfer reactions on the ground state and isomeric state of a ¹³⁰Sn beam. K. L. Jones, A. Bey, S. Burcher, J. M. Allmond, A. Galindo-Uribarri, D. C. Radford, S. Ahn, A. Ayres, D. W. Bardayan, J. A. Cizewski, R. F. Garcia Ruiz, M. E. Howard, R. L. Kozub, J. F. Liang, B. Manning, M. Matos, C. D. Nesaraja, P. D. O’Malley, E. Padilla-Rodal, S. D. Pain, S. T. Pittman, A. Ratkiewicz, K. T. Schmitt, M. S. Smith, D. W. Stracener, and R. L. Varner, Phys. Rev. C 105, 024602, 2022.
• Use of Bayesian Optimization to understand the structure of nuclei. J. Hooker, J. Kovoor, K.L Jones, R. Kanungo, M. Alcorta, J. Allen, C. Andreoiu, L. Atar, D.W. Bardayan, S.S. Bhattacharjee, D. Blankstein, C. Burbadge, S. Burcher, W.N. Catford, S. Cha, K. Chae, D. Connolly, B. Davids, N. Esker, F.H. Garcia, S. Gillespie, R. Ghimire, A. Gula, G. Hackman, S. Hallam, M. Hellmich, J. Henderson, M. Holl, P. Jassal, S. King, T. Knight, R. Kruecken, A. Lepailleur, J. Liang, L. Morrison, P.D. O’Malley, S.D. Pain, X. Pereira-Lopez, A. Psaltis, A. Radich, A.C. Shotter, M. Vostinar, M. Williams, O. Workman, Nucl. Inst. Meth. B 512, 6, 2022.
• Developing the ³²S(p,d)³¹S*(p, gamma) reaction to probe the ³⁰P(p,gamma)³¹S reaction rate in classical novae. Sean Burcher, Kelly A Chipps, R O Hughes, C S Reingold, A. Saastamoinen, J.T. Harke, N. Cooper, S. Ahn, J.M. Allmond, H. Clark, J. A. Cizewski, M.R. Hall, J. Hooker, H. Jayatissa, K.L. Jones, S. Ota, S.D. Pain, K. Schmidt, A. Simon, S. Upadhyayula, Phys. Rev. C, Volume 105, 045805, 2022.
• The magic nature of ¹³²Sn explored through the single-particle states of ¹³³Sn. K.L. Jones, A.S. Adekola, D.W. Bardayan, J.C. Blackmon, K.Y. Chae, K.A. Chipps, J.A. Cizewski, L. Erikson, C. Harlin, R. Hatarik, R. Kapler, R.L. Kozub, J.F. Liang, R. Livesay, Z. Ma, B.H. Moazen, C.D. Nesaraja, F.M. Nunes, S.D. Pain, N.P. Patterson, D. Shapira, J.F. Shriner Jr, M.S. Smith, T.P. Swan, J.S. Thomas Nature (London) 465, 454 (2010).
• Structure of ¹⁰⁷Sn studied through single-neutron knockout reactions. G.Cerizza, A.Ayres, K.L.Jones, R.Grzywacz, A.Bey, C.Bingham, L.Cartegni, D.Miller, S.Padgett, T.Baugher, D.Bazin, J.S.Berryman, A.Gade, S.McDaniel, A.Ratkiewicz, A.Shore, S.R.Stroberg, D.Weisshaar, K.Wimmer, R.Winkler, S.D.Pain, K.Y.Chae, J.A.Cizewski, M.E.Howard, and J.A.Tostevin. Phys. Rev. C 93, 021601 (2016).