Alum Receives Award from BNL for PhD Thesis Research

Benjamin Bannier with BNL Director Doon Gibbs (photo courtesy of BNL)

Stony Brook University alum Benjamin Bannier, who earned his PhD in Physics last May, has received this year’s RHIC/AGS Thesis Award at the annual RHIC/AGS Users’ Meeting, which was held at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) June 9 through June 12.

Each year BNL invites PhD students to submit their thesis to the RHIC/AGS Thesis Award Competition, which recognizes the most outstanding thesis related to research conducted at BNL’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS), NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL), Tandem Van de Graaff Accelerator Facility, Brookhaven Linac Isotope Producer (BLIP) or Accelerator Test Facility (ATF). Bannier received a certificate of recognition and a check for $3,000.

The paper, Centrality dependence of low-momentum direct-photon production in Au + Au collisions at sq(sNN) = 200 GeV, is published in Physical Review C (PRC), a journal of the American Physical Society that features leading research in all areas of experimental and theoretical nuclear physics. It was chosen as an editors suggestion and a PRC highlight, and the paper is also featured on the cover of the corresponding issue. The publication is based on the combined work of Bannier and fellow SBU alum Richard Petti, both students of Physics Professor Axel Drees.

Bannier is now a senior software developer at ParStream in Hamburg, Germany.