Biography

Andris Skuja is Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he has been on the faculty for more than 30 years. Dr. Skuja has extensive experience in international high-energy projects, and has worked at the DESY accelerator facility in Germany and the OPAL experiment at CERN prior to joining the Large Hadron Collider's Compact Muon Solenoid collaboration. For CMS, Dr. Skuja serves as Project Manager for the hadron calorimeter, a position that entails considerable travel and international scientific and engineering liaison.

Biography

Phillip Sprangle is Professor of Electrical &Computer Engineering and Physics and is a member of the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics at the University of Maryland as well as an Emeritus Scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory. Dr. Sprangle has a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Cornell University. His current research covers a wide range of fields and includes the atmospheric propagation of high-energy lasers, laser driven accelerators, high intensity ultra-short pulse laser matter interaction and propagation physics, nonlinear optics and plasma physics. He is a fellow of the OSA, APS, IEEE and DEPS and winner of the Presidential Rank Award (2015), Advanced Accelerator Concept Prize (2014), James Clerk Maxwell Prize (2013), Fred E. Saalfeld Award (2012), Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Award (2011), IEEE Plasma Science Award (2008), Sigma Xi Pure Science Award, (1994), International Free Electron Laser Prize (1991), E.O. Hulburt Science and Engineering Award (1986), two Technology Transfer Awards (1995, 2004), as well as the Top Navy Scientist and Engineer of the Year Award (2008). He has published over 300 refereed scientific articles and holds 18 US patents.

Biography

Greg Sullivan received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois and did postdoctoral work at the University of Chicago before joining the UMD faculty in 1995. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and has been named a UMD "Rainmaker" for his prodigious research funding. He has served as the Department's Associate Chair for both Graduate Studies and for Facilities and Personnel, and has held several key leadership positions in his field of high energy physics. He has worked on the on the IceCube experiment at the South Pole, including a role as spokesperson from 2011-13. Physics World named the first observations of cosmic neutrinos by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory the 2013 Breakthrough of the Year. Dr. Sullivan is a co-recipient of the 2016 Breakthrough prize in Physics, serves on the advisory committee for the NSF directorate of geosciences, and also served on the committee of visitors for NSF Antarctic sciences.

Research:

• Particle Astrophysics

Biography

Raman Sundrum is the John S. Toll Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland. He did his undergraduate studies at University of Sydney in Australia and received his Ph.D. from Yale University. He did his postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley, Harvard, BU and Stanford. He joined the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the Johns Hopkins University in 2000, and became one of two Alumni Centennial Chairs there. In 2010, he moved to the University of Maryland. His research in particle physics and cosmology focuses on theoretical mechanisms and observable implications of extra spacetime dimensions, supersymmetry, and strongly coupled dynamics. His highest impact contribution to the field is a class of extra-dimensional models called the Randall–Sundrum models, first published in 1999 with Lisa Randall. Sundrum is a UMD Distinguished University Professor.