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FRIB Saturday Morning Physics talk - A microscopic view of the stars

 Stephanie Lyons

Talk details

Talk Abstract

How do you attempt to understand the inner workings of an object when you can’t get close to it? In this Saturday Morning Physics talk, Stephanie Lyons will discuss how scientists at FRIB are working to understand some of the largest objects in the universe, using some of the smallest. In a celebration of the International Year of the Periodic Table, Lyons will take the audience on an adventure to the interior of a star to understand how the elements are made. This talk will dive into understanding the role that nuclear physics plays in the cosmos, and how experiments in the laboratory help answer major scientific questions. This talk is a part of FRIB Saturday Morning Physics.

Presenter

Stephanie Lyons 

Stephanie Lyons is currently a P. Gregers Hansen Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL). She received her PhD in physics from the University of Notre Dame in 2016, where she was a Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration Stockpile Stewardship Graduate Fellow. She completed her bachelor's degree in physics at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in 2009. While working on her doctorate, Lyons established a national chapter of the Association for Women in Science. 

Lyons’s research is in nuclear astrophysics, which focuses on answering questions about how the elements in the universe were created. As part of her graduate work, Lyons helped to build and commission one of Notre Dame’s new accelerators, which she then used to perform measurements of nuclear reactions. Her research at NSCL includes investigating various properties of radioactive nuclei that are created in stellar collisions and explosions.