Professor Philippe Collon is the recipient of the
Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C. Award for Excellence
in Undergraduate Teaching. Established in 2007, the Joyce Award for
Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, formerly known as the Kaneb
Teaching Award, honors faculty members who have had a profound influence
on undergraduate students through sustained exemplary teaching at
Notre Dame. In particular, the award recognizes faculty who create
environments that stimulate significant student learning, elevate
students to a new level of intellectual engagement, and foster students'
ability to express themselves effectively within the discipline.
This university award, inaugurated on the 70th anniversary
of Fr. Joyce's graduation from Notre Dame, is funded through an endowment
established by the Class of 1937. Fr. Joyce served as Notre Dame's
executive vice president from 1952 to 1987. Fr. Joyce's passionate
commitment to our Lady's University is reflected through faculty dedication
to, and exemplary teaching of, Notre Dame's undergraduates.
Philippe Collon, Associate Professor of Physics, was also one
of those recently chosen to receive the Joyce Award. Professor Collon
received his Ph.D. degree from Universität Wien - Institut Für
Radiumforschung und Kernphysik, Vienna, Austria. He came to the University
of Notre Dame as an Assistant Professor in 2003. In addition, he is
Associate Director of the Center for Undergraduate Scholarly Engagement
(CUSE) of the University of Notre Dame and Outreach Coordinator for
the Underground Accelerator Collaboration DIANA at the new National
Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL). He is
a member of the European Physical Society and the American Physical
Society.
His research work involves the development of detection techniques
using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS). AMS has traditionally been
used to detect environmental tracers at and below their natural abundance
levels (10Be, 14C, 36Cl, ... ). Its
main attribute is its power to accelerate and analyze ions of radioactive
nuclei with extremely high sensitivity. However many aspects of this
powerful technique cannot only be used for research involving radioactive-beam
physics, but also used to study nuclear reactions which, under stellar
conditions, involve in most cases very low counting rates and high
isobaric backgrounds.
Professor Collon has been developing AMS for noble gas tracers
and is presently working on applying this technique to study nuclear
reactions of interest in stellar nucleosynthesis. He is also involved
in the development of a high intensity, low energy ion source that
will be used to measure reaction rates in conditions much closer to
those prevailing in stellar environments than previously.
April 30, 2010