FAIR-GENCO celebrates 25th anniversary: Annual meeting and award ceremony
02.04.2025 |
The meeting of the FAIR-GSI Exotic Nuclei Community (GENCO) took place again this year at GSI/FAIR as part of the NUSTAR Annual Meeting. Not only the awarding of memberships and the Young Scientist Award were reasons to celebrate – also GENCO had its 25th anniversary.
Dr. Guy Leckenby from TRIUMF and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, was awarded this year’s Young Scientist Award for his investigations of the decay of fully-ionized thallium-205 using the combination of Fragment Separator and Experimental Storage Ring (FRS-ESR) at GSI/FAIR to clarify open questions of the lead-205 dating in the early solar system.
The Young Scientist Award is presented annually by GENCO to outstanding young researchers working in the field of experimental or theoretical nuclear physics or chemistry. The winners are selected by an international jury. The prize is endowed with 1,000 euros.
In a memorial colloquium for the recently deceased GSI element discoverer Professor Gottfried Münzenberg, Professor Sir Martyn Poliakoff, University of Nottingham, UK, spoke about the periodic table of elements and Professor Walter Henning, Argonne National Laboratory, USA, and former Scientific Managing Director of GSI, shared his insights about Gottfried Münzenberg’s life, his scientific successes in the synthesis and investigation of exotic nuclei as well as his groundbreaking contributions to new experiments in FAIR’s NUSTAR collaboration.
As part of the NUSTAR plenary program, six GENCO Young Scientist Awardees of previous years provided an overview of the advancement of their fields, their professional careers since receiving the award, and their current projects. The presentations covered a wide range of research areas, from nuclear reactions, laser spectroscopy, nuclear theory and fundamental questions such as the lifetime of the neutron to applications of radioactive isotopes in medicine.
Furthermore, several new members of the FAIR-GENCO community received the “FAIR-GENCO Membership Award”:
- Gerda Neyens (KU Leuven, Belgium) for groundbreaking experimental results obtained with laser spectroscopic techniques, which impact on the understanding of nuclear structure around closed shells far-off stability.
- Michael Block (HIM/GSI) for groundbreaking studies at SHIPTRAP that unravel various exciting features of superheavy elements and for taking a leading role in shaping the program of the NUSTAR Collaboration.
- Christoph E. Düllmann (HIM/GSI)for the development of modern chemistry methods with single atoms, unique experiments at the TASCA gas-filled separator, and for the chemical characterization of the heaviest elements. (CP)
