National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) Associate Director for Experimental Research Remco Zegers has been elected as a 2017 Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS).

APS is a nonprofit membership organization that works to advance and spread knowledge of physics via publications, meetings, activities, and more. Fellows are selected for their outstanding contributions to physics. Each year, the number of APS fellows elected is no more than one half of one percent of the membership.

Zegers was elected for his study of spin and isospin excitations of atomic nuclei, and the implications of such excitations to human understanding of fundamental properties of nuclei, neutrinos, and astrophysical processes.

Zegers, a professor of physics, is a 1999 graduate of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands with a PhD in Mathematics and Natural Sciences. He has worked at NSCL since 2003. He works with students and research associates in the NSCL Charge-Exchange Group to study a particular class of nuclear reactions: charge-exchange reactions. By performing experiments with these reactions, primarily at NSCL, the group addresses a diverse set of scientific questions, such as:

• What makes a star explode and ejects its material into space to create planets like Earth?
• What is the mass of the neutrino?
• What forces govern the properties of nuclei and their interactions? 

The NSCL Charge-exchange group is also developing new experimental techniques that will be used at FRIB in the future.

“I am grateful for the support of the laboratory and its staff as well as the Department of Physics and Astronomy over the years. It is very much appreciated and, without their support, this would never have happened,” said Zegers.

”Remco is a leader in the field of physics, and he deserves this recognition,” said FRIB Laboratory Director Thomas Glasmacher. “Congratulations to Remco for all of his hard work.”