Ágota Koszorús - KU Leuven
After obtaining her bachelor's and master’s degree at the University of Novi Sad in Serbia, Agi enrolled in the PhD programme of KU Leuven in Belgium, joining the Nuclear Moments group. There, she focused on working on the Collinear Resonance Ionization Spectroscopy (CRIS) experiment. Agi's research focused on developing high-precision measurements using the CRIS technique. She applied the technique to study the magic character of N=32 in neutron-rich K isotopes.
From October 2019, Agi worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Liverpool but based at the IGISOL facility in Jyväskylä, Finland. Her research interests shifted to the proton-rich landscape between Ca and Ni, and she performed the first laser spectroscopy study of unstable Cr and Co isotopes.
In September 2021 Agi started a new position as a research fellow at ISOLDE-CERN pursuing a physics programe using the CRIS technique. Her main goal is to explore the island of inversion at N=20 by performing the first nuclear charge radius measurements beyond N=20.
In January, she started an assistant professor position at KU Leuven. Today, Agi is working on establishing a new laser spectroscopy apparatus at the ISOL@MYRRHA facility in Belgium which is currently under construction.
Agi is inspired to further push the limits of collinear laser spectroscopy methods to access and investigate unexplored phenomena.
Volker Sonnenschein - Hübner Photonics
Volker Sonnenschein is an R&D Engineer for Laser technologies at Hübner Photonics. He received his diploma in physics at the Gutenberg University of Mainz and completed his PhD studies in the IGISOL group at the accelerator laboratory of the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. After graduation he was employed as an assistant professor at the Energy Engineering department of the university of Nagoya with projects focused on radiocarbon detection and laser ionization spectroscopy. His main interests are laser development, frequency stabilization techniques as well as their applications in optical spectroscopy of radioisotopes. Presently his efforts are focused on developments of continuous-wave optical parametric oscillators.
Cornelia Hoehr - TRIUMF
Cornelia Hoehr received her Ph.D. in physics from Heidelberg University in Germany and the Max-Plank institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg. After a post-doctoral research term at the Argonne National Lab, USA, she then moved to TRIUMF as a post-doctoral researcher, and subsequently took on roles in operation and facilities in isotope production and proton therapy. In 2013 she became a research scientist at TRIUMF and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria, and in 2018 she became Adjunct at the University of British Columbia and took over the role as Deputy Director – Life Sciences at TRIUMF. Her research interests are focused on medical isotope production and proton therapy. She is a member of the steering committee for the Particle Therapy Co-Operative Group (PTCOG), consultant to the IAEA in isotope production, and was chair of the TRIUMF User Group Executive Committee (TUEC).
Natalia Oreshkina - MPIK
Natalia S. Oreshkina did her PhD at Saint Petersburg State University (Russia) on the topic "QED and correlation corrections to the hyperfine structure of highly charged ions." In 2011, she joined Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (Heidelberg, Germany) as a postdoc, and after a few years, she started her group there.
The main subject of her studies is the high-precision theory of highly charged ions and muonic atoms, and their applications for fundamental research, for the search for the new physics beyond the Standard Model, and for probing nuclear physics in atomic experiments.
Her group provides state-of-the-art theory predictions for the current experiments in PSI on heavy muonic atoms aimed at determining the nuclear radii from the muonic x-ray spectroscopy.
See for more information here: https://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/mpi/en/forschung/abteilungen-und-gruppen/theoretische-quantendynamik-und-quantenelektrodynamik/people/natalia-s-oreshkina
Michael Block - GSI / HIM / JGU Mainz
Michael Block is Professor of Superheavy Element Physics at Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU) Mainz and head of the research sections on Superheavy Element Physics at GSI Helmholtzzentrum Darmstadt and Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM), Germany.
He studied physics at University of Mainz, Germany, where he received his PhD working on laser spectroscopy of trapped calcium ions. He then joined the GSI Darmstadt as postdoctoral researcher and became the leader of the SHIPTRAP project. Later spent about one and a half years at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University, MI, USA, to work on mass measurements of projectile fragments with LEBIT. In 2007, he joined the Superheavy Element Physics department of GSI Darmstadt as staff scientist. Since 2015, he holds a joint professorship at JGU Mainz and GSI Darmstadt.
His main research activities include measuring various atomic and nuclear properties of the actinides and the transactinides or superheavy elements. To this end, he employs Penning-trap mass spectrometry, resonance laser spectroscopy, and nuclear spectroscopy. He is also involved in other precision experiments and the development of novel methods for mass spectrometry and laser spectroscopy of rare isotopes.
João Pedro Ramos - SCK CEN
Before coming to SCK CEN, João worked at CERN for 8 years (in Geneva, Switzerland) in the ISOLDE and MEDICIS facilities, where he started as a master student (University of Aveiro, Portugal). He then progressed as a PhD student (EPFL, Switzerland) developing nanostructured target materials for radioactive ion beam production. He later worked as a postdoc to design the new ISOLDE proton-to-neutron converter target. In his last year at CERN he was the MEDICIS Coordinator (co-financed by KULeuven), coordinating the production and deliveries of medical radioisotopes for research partners. Since 2019 he works at SCK CEN in the Physics and Target Research group (integrated in the Innovative Nuclear Systems Institute) as the technical coordinator for the target and ion source assembly design for the future ISOL@MYRRHA.
Bradley Cheal - University of Liverpool
After completing his Master’s degree in physics with maths at the University of Warwick, he began studying nuclear structure using laser spectroscopy for his PhD at the University of Birmingham, UK. Following postdoctoral work and the award of an STFC Advanced Fellowship while at the University of Manchester, he moved to the University of Liverpool in 2013. Most of his research involves the use of high resolution collinear laser spectroscopy at the JYFL IGISOL laboratory, Finland, and at COLLAPS at ISOLDE, CERN. He has also worked at TRIUMF and at the RADRIS setup at GSI.
Johannes Lachner - HZDR
Johannes studied Physics at the Technical University in Munich and finished his diploma in 2008 with an experimental thesis on accelerator mass spectrometry of actinides. He continued in the field with a PhD thesis at the Laboratory of Ion Beam Physics of ETH Zurich. There he worked at the compact AMS facility Tandy with a focus on environmental applications, particularly on measurements of 10Be and actinides at low beam energies. In 2013, after a short Post-Doc stay at the Swiss EAWAG, he joined VERA (Vienna Environmental Research Accelerator) at the University of Vienna. During his time there, he performed measurements using the traditional AMS technique and incorporated an ion cooler for laser photodetachment into the AMS system. This way, he improved measurements of the radioisotopes 36Cl and 26Al and made first steps towards the measurement of 135Cs and 137Cs. Johannes became a staff scientist at Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf in the group of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry and Isotope Research in 2019. There he works at the DREsden AMS system DREAMS and constructs a second generation ion-laser interaction setup for the AMS system HAMSTER Helmholtz Accelerator Mass Spectrometer Tracing Environmental Radionuclides) that is planned to go into operation in Dresden by end of this year.
