Dr. Benjamin Jones (Associate Professor of Physics)

Benjamin J. P. Jones is an Associate Professor of Physics at UTA.  He received his undergraduate degree from Cambridge University and his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His PhD thesis work, which probed the properties of atmospheric neutrinos at the IceCube Neutrino Telescope and neutrinos from particle accelerators with liquid argon time projection chamber technology, was recognized with the Tanaka Dissertation Award from the American Physical Society.  Jones’s research group at UTA focuses on neutrino physics and astrophysics, in particular the nature and size of the mass of the neutrino mass, development of barium tagging for neutrinoless double beta decay, and searches for exotic phenomena such as oscillations of sterile neutrinos. He is co-chair of the Speakers and Readers Committee for the NEXT neutrinoless double beta decay collaboration, served as co-leader of the US Snowmass Process Neutrino Properties Working Group, and is an associate director of the UTA Center for High Energy and Nuclear Physics and co-Director of the UTA Center for Advanced Detector Technology.

Dr. David Nygren (Presidential Distinguished Professor of Physics)

David R. Nygren a Presidential Distinguished Professor of Physics at UTA. He is known for inventing the Time Projection Chamber, or TPC, used worldwide for over three decades in a variety of applications in particle detection and discovery from relativistic heavy ion collisions to the search for Dark Matter and extremely rare nuclear decays. He is a member of the National Academy of Science; fellow of the American Physical Society; recipient of the Panofsky Prize of the American Physical Society, the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the Department of Energy, the Berkeley Lab Prize – Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Award from the IEEE. Nygren is the co-Spokesperson of the international NEXT collaboration, and has made wide contributions to particle physics including development of the Digital Optical module concept for IceCube Detector, invention of column-based pixel array architecture for high-luminosity applications, invention of low-dose mammography systems, and origination of the QPix concept for efficient sparse readout of large liquid argon TPCs.

David Nygren’s Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_R._Nygren

Dr. Krishan Mistry (Postdoctoral Research Fellow )

Krishan Mistry is a postdoctoral research fellow at UTA. He received his undergraduate degree and subsequently his PhD at the University of Manchester in 2021. His research is focused on understanding the properties of neutrinos which, may help us elucidate the origins of the universe. His PhD research received the Springer Thesis Award in 2023 where he studied the interaction of neutrinos with matter making the first measurements of the total and differential electron neutrino cross section on argon with the MicroBooNE liquid argon time projection chamber. His current area of research at UTA focuses on the NEXT neutrinoless double beta decay experiment where he is constructing the electroluminescence and cathode regions for the NEXT-100 experiment as well as performing detailed simulations to model the detector physics.

Nicholas Kaelan Byrnes (Graduate Student)

Nick Byrnes is a PhD student at University of Texas Arlington studying physics. A recipient of the University of Texas Arlington Presidential Merit Scholarship, he graduated cum laude from the University of Texas Arlington in 2018, majoring in physics and minoring in mathematics though the University’s Honors College. His primary field of study during this time was positron surface spectroscopy. He started his graduate studies working on the advancement of biochemistry techniques to apply to the search for neutrinoless double beta decay through the detection of barium. He was awarded second place at the University of Texas Arlington ACES poster competition for this research. Nick has since moved on to the development of novel gaseous particle detectors, focusing on the creation of a high speed camera-interfaced Time Projection Chamber for the direct observation of particle interactions. Nick is a recipient of the Michael and Wanda Ray Fellowship, University Scholars Endowment, and James L. Horowitz Physics Scholarship.

Enakshi Dey (Graduate Student)

Enakshi is a first-year graduate student . She completed her masters from the University of Calcutta and is currently working with the NEXT group at UTA. Enakshi is a recipient of the Department of Science and Technology’s Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) Scholarship. Her work  focus on collection and extraction techniques for barium tagging, using RF-based concentrators  with potential applications in neutrino less double beta decay. Through her research, Enakshi aims to contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge and the development of new technologies for the benefit of society.

Karen Navarro (Graduate Student)

Karen E. Navarro is a PhD student in physics working with Dr. Ben Jones. Karen is an El Paso native who began her physics undergraduate at the University of Texas at El Paso, before transferring to Texas Tech University in Lubbock. She then went onto complete an internship with the USRA under a NASA-MSFC contract assisting in the calibration and analysis for the IXPE telescope She joined the UTA Neutrinos and Rare Event Searches group to begin her PhD research in 2020. Her work has focused on development of a novel aluminosilicate barium ion beam in high pressure noble gases for testing of barium tagging devices, and neural network-based event reconstruction techniques for event reconstruction in the NEXT-White experiment.

Akshima Negi (Graduate Student)

Akshima is a first year Graduate student. She did her masters in Physics at the Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur. She is currently working with the IceCube team at UTA, doing the post unblinding checks for the Decoherence analysis. She is also working on including the uncertainties introduced due to birefringence nature of glacier ice for the next iteration of snowstorm method.

Benjamin Smithers (Graduate Student)

Benjamin R Smithers is a PhD candidate working with Dr. Benjamin Jones at UTA. He earned his bachelor’s degree at University of California at Santa Cruz, where he majored in both Physics and Mathematics. There, Smithers was awarded the Chancellor’s Undergraduate Award for work on his thesis: simulating the effects of beam-induced neutron radiation on calorimetry in the high-radiation forward environment of the proposed International Linear Collider. Now he is using his computational and simulation experience to investigate the prospects of new physics observable at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, with the hopes of studying events largely ignored in the past to provide world-leading constraints on the hypothetical sterile neutrino. He has been awarded the IceCube Impact award and is a winner of the 2020 TX-APS Graduate Student Speaker award.

Ben’s GitHub: https://github.com/BenSmithers

Jacqueline Baeza-Rubio (Undergraduate Researcher)

Jacqueline “Jackie” Baeza-Rubio is a 4th-year undergraduate student researching neutrinoless double-beta decay under Dr. David Nygren and Dr. Ben Jones. Now a senior-year college student, Jackie previously worked in the Neutrino Rare Event Searches Group for 2 years as a High School intern. At UTA, she is pursuing a Bachelors’s degree in Physics through the University’s Honors College. Currently, Jackie is working on ion delivery for Barium tagging simulations in collaboration with the NEXT experiment. She is the PR director for the outreach program @DFWTapTalks, UTA’s youngest McNair scholar, and undergraduate board representative for the National Society of Hispanic Physicists

Ivana Moya (Undergraduate Researcher)

Ivana Moya is a 3rd year undergraduate student currently pursuing a Bachelor’s of Science in Physics and Mathematics. She previously worked on CRAB-0 with the NEXT experiment and is currently working on IceCube. Ivana received the UTA presidential scholarship. After college she plans to further her education by pursuing a PhD in Physics.

Melanie Cabriales (Undergraduate Researcher)

Melanie Cabriales is a 4th-year undergraduate student, she is pursuing a Bachelors of Science degree in Physics with a minor in Mathematics. She is currently working in Dr. Jones group towards implementing Project8 at UTA by showing that we can make the VSS component of Project8. She is also the Lead Resident Assistant at Arlington Hall and is planning on pursuing her Masters Degree in Astrophysics.

Nathan Coward (Undergraduate Researcher)

Nathan Coward is a transfer student at The University of Texas at Arlington. Having received his associates of science from TCCD, he is now pursuing a bachelor’s degree in physics. Over the course of his time spent working in industry as well as during his collegiate career he has had the opportunity to acquire a broad set of skills related to engineering, fabrication, drafting and design, electronics, physics and chemistry. Currently, Nathan works with a team of undergraduate and graduate colleagues under the direction of Dr. Ben Jones to carry out research and development for Project 8. The project 8 research group, and others like it, hope to contribute to the scientific community by improving our understanding of the standard model by better understanding the nature and properties of the neutrino.

James deLeon (Undergraduate Researcher)

James deLeon is a 5th year undergraduate student at UT Arlington currently pursuing a Bachelor’s of Science in Physics and Electrical Engineering with a minor in Computer Science. Throughout his undergraduate career, James has been involved in a variety of research projects pertaining to experimental high-energy particle physics, and is now exploring neutrinoless double-beta decay under Dr. Benjamin Jones and Dr. Nygren with the development of a time projection chamber operating at atmospheric pressures. After completing his undergraduate degrees, James will further his education by pursuing a PhD in Experimental Nuclear Physics.

Luis Taylor (Undergraduate Researcher)

Luis Taylor is a 1st-year undergraduate student and is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Physics. He is currently working under Dr. Ben Jones on Project 8 to contribute to building a velocity state selector by configuring an external cavity diode laser and working with the optimization of the evaporative cooling stage of the project. The area of physics that interests him the most is quantum physics especially the topics of superposition, entanglement, and quantum computing.