Dr.
Michael Wiescher, Freimann Professor of Physics, was appointed by
the National Research Council of the National Academies to serve on
an assessment committee of the Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope
Facility in the United States (RISAC). The RISAC committee was charged
by the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation to define
and evaluate the agenda for a next generation US facility for Rare Isotope
Beams (FRIB). The detailed charge for the RISAC committee can be found
at their website
.
The 18 members of the committee represent nationally
recognized leaders of nuclear science in the United States, Europe,
and Japan. The committee began their study process on December 2005
and has submitted the report to the National Academies. The report summarizes
the goals for nuclear physics with radioactive beams and discusses the
increasing demand for radioactive beam facilities worldwide. It underlines
the need for a worldwide competitive US radioactive beam facility. The
report was approved for public release on December 8, 2006. The final
report appears on The National
Academies homepage as well as on the RISAC
homepage.
The Nuclear Physics faculty at Notre Dame has played
a pioneering role in the development of radioactive beams for the last
decade.
Jim Kolata has developed the TwinSol facility, one of the first
successfully operating radioactive beam facilities in the nation, to
study nuclear reaction processes far from stability. Ani
Aprahamian utilized this technique to develop one of the first Nuclear
Structure programs with radioactive beams. Michael Wiescher played a
pioneering role in demonstrating the role and impact of radioactive
beams for Nuclear Astrophysics measurement. Wiescher has served for
many years on the FRIB (RIA) steering committee for a US radioactive
beam facility. He was recently elected by the community to serve a second
term on the RIA user
committee.
Michael Wiescher is the Director of the Institute
for Structure and Nuclear Astrophysics (ISNAP) at Notre Dame. Wiescher
serves also as Director of the Joint
Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA) of the University of Notre
Dame, Michigan State University, and the University of Chicago. JINA
is funded as one of the ten Physics Frontier Centers of the National
Science Foundation.
