National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) Associate Director for Experimental Research Remco Zegers has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as an AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.

This year 416 members have been awarded this honor by AAAS because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. Zegers was elected as an AAAS Fellow for “distinguished contributions to the fields of nuclear science and nuclear astrophysics, particularly for determination of weak interaction rates inferred from heavy-ion collisions.”

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

“I am very thankful to be named a 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow. I am particularly thankful to past and present members of the charge-exchange group, colleagues and staff at the laboratory and MSU, and collaborators from many other institutions, all of whom I have the pleasure to work with and learn from every day,” said Zegers.

“Remco truly deserves this honor for his continued commitment to our field,” said FRIB Laboratory Director Thomas Glasmacher. “NSCL and FRIB benefit greatly from his expertise and leadership.”

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Michigan State University is establishing FRIB as a new scientific user facility for the Office of Nuclear Physics in the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Under construction on campus and operated by MSU, FRIB will enable scientists to make discoveries about the properties of rare isotopes in order to better understand the physics of nuclei, nuclear astrophysics, fundamental interactions, and applications for society, including in medicine, homeland security and industry.

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The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world’s largest general scientific society. AAAS was founded in 1848 and includes nearly 250 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. See www.aaas.org.