Federal Grant Will Fund University of Richmond Professor's Research and Measurements of Nation's Nuclear Stockpile
June 1, 2006
The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded Cornelius Beausang, associate professor of physics at the University of Richmond, a grant to conduct non-classified research and measurements relevant to the maintenance of the nation’s nuclear stockpile.
Beausang will receive $170,109 for the first year of a three-year project. Two years’ additional funding is expected, for a total of more than $510,000. Beausang and his graduate and undergraduate assistants will travel to Yale University in Connecticut and Lawrence Berkeley National and Lawrence Livermore National laboratories in California to collaborate with scientists working there.
“These collaborations will provide unprecedented access for Richmond undergraduates to top scientists and to national facilities,” said Beausang. The project involves measuring fission probabilities of several different isotopes of uranium using accelerator facilities at Yale and the two national labs.
Beausang joined Richmond in 2004 after teaching eight years at Yale, where his low energy nuclear physics research also was funded by DOE. He holds the Robert E. and Lena F. Loving Chair in Physics at Richmond.
Beausang received a bachelor’s degree from University College in Cork, Ireland, and master’s and doctoral degrees from the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Before teaching at Yale, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley lab and a Chadwick Fellow at the University of Liverpool in England.