Research Interests:

His field of research is nuclear and particle physics. Currently, his main activities focus on hypernuclear spectroscopy: Ordinary nuclei are composed of protons and neutrons which in turn contain up and down quarks. In a hyperon, one of the original quarks is substituted by a strange quark. A hypernucleus contains a hyperon implanted as an "impurity'' within the nuclear medium. Precise information about the mass and excitation energies of hypernuclei allows one to infer the underlying hyperon-nucleon interaction, which is not yet well known. Further, it is believed that some supernova explosions leave a neutron star as a remnant and that at least some regions in neutron stars are made up of matter containing strange quarks. A comprehensive set of hypernuclear data ultimately will also constrain current models of possible strange matter in stellar objects.

In this field, he is a co-spokesperson for two Jefferson Lab experiments (E01-011 & E05-115) and also collaborator on E05 & E13, two experiments at J-PARC, a facility currently under construction in Japan.At Jefferson Lab, he is also collaborator on various experiments that study, for example, the internal structure of nucleons (protons & neutrons).