NGCSU physics professors receive federal grant

DAHLONEGA - The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded a three-year renewal grant to two physics professors at North Georgia College & State University.

The grant, totaling $333,000 over three years, supports nuclear physics research conducted by Drs. Richard Prior and Mark Spraker in collaboration with the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory (TUNL) and the High Intensity Gamma-ray Source project, both located at Duke University.

“I was originally awarded a three-year grant from them in late 1993, shortly before I came to North Georgia in the fall of 1994,” Prior said. “Since then, it has been renewed every three years. Including the current three-year grant that just began, the total is now $1.37 million.”

Prior, head of North Georgia’s physics department, has collaborated with physicists at TUNL since 1990. Spraker is part of the group as well, and has conducted research at the laboratory. Working as a team, their primary activities include studying nuclear reactions at very low energies.

“Reactions at these low energies are simpler to analyze and also are of interest in nuclear astrophysics,” Prior said.

TUNL, located at Duke University, is the largest university-based nuclear physics lab in the United States and is funded by the Department of Energy. Its primary research faculty comes from Duke, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. However, it draws additional collaborators like Prior and Spraker from many different universities in the southeast. Prior and Spraker are two of about 75 researchers working on experimental and theoretical projects with nuclear energy applications.

The professors are able to spend two months each summer conducting research at Duke and travel to professional meetings and to the laboratory for short research trips during the academic year. Their work has resulted in numerous physics journal articles, and the collaborative research relationship has also been beneficial to North Georgia students, some of whom have had the opportunity to conduct experiments at TUNL and have used the experience to pursue graduate level studies in nuclear physics.