Effective July 1st, 2022, our very own Jonathan Engel became the “Phi Delta Theta/Matthew Mason Distinguished Professor.” Appointment to a distinguished professorship is one of the highest honors the University bestows upon its faculty members. The honor recognizes faculty who have achieved distinction in their field or across disciplines. Named distinguished professors are tenured faculty members who are awarded the honorary title with additional salary and research funds.
Professor Engel, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, works primarily to apply nuclear-structure theory to interpret experiments in fundamental physics, so as to better understand, e.g., the nature of dark matter, properties of neutrinos, and the reason the universe contains so much more matter than antimatter. He was the prominent leader of a national 11-institution “Topical Collaboration in Nuclear Theory,” funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, on these subjects and this May led a large international meeting on them in Asheville. His research is funded by several grants, from both the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. Within the department, he has created three popular interdisciplinary courses, on nonlinear dynamics, the philosophy of quantum mechanics, and quantum computing.