Annual Postdoctoral Prize

The JSA Annual Postdoctoral Prize for outstanding postdocs has once again been funded by JSA.

The competition is run by the Users Organization Board of Directors. The Prize is a $10,000 grant for a research project of the candidate's choosing and an invitation with travel reimbursement up to $600 to present a talk and receive the prize at the 2024 Annual Users Group meeting at Jefferson Lab this June. The award is based (in part) on the originality and quality of this proposed research.

The deadline for the 2024 competition is set for COB March 17, 2024 If you want to be considered, please email your complete application package to Lorelei Carlson (lorelei@jlab.org) by the deadline (see instructions below). The winner will be announced in Spring 2024. JSA employees and individuals receiving other support from the JSA Initiatives Fund Program are not eligible for this prize.

The rules are:

• All nominees must be within five years of graduation, and in a postdoc or equivalent position at a University or national Lab (JLab employees not eligible), at the time of nomination.
• Postdocs in both experiment and theory are eligible. Previous winners are not eligible to apply.
• Entries should include a research statement (five page limit) and CV by the nominee, along with three letters of reference. The research statement should describe past work and future plans and should include a preliminary budget with a total budget not to exceed $10K. All materials may be emailed in separately.
• The competition will be judged by the Users Organization Board of Directors.
• The basis for picking the top candidate includes a record of accomplishment in physics, a planned high impact Jefferson Lab physics program, proposed use of the research grant, and promise of further accomplishments in the Jefferson Lab research fields in the future.
• The Prize will be in the form of a research grant. The funds can be used for travel, supplies, or equipment in support of the proposed research plan. The research plan need not be new or independent of the candidate's current research program, but the quality and novelty of the proposed research is considered in the evaluation process.

This project is supported by the Initiatives Fund Program, a JSA commitment, to support programs, initiatives, and activities that further the scientific outreach, promote the science, education and technology of Jefferson Lab and benefit the Lab’s extended user community in ways that complement the Lab’s basic and applied research missions.

Past Postdoctoral Prize Award Winners

2023: Peter Hurck- Strange physics at GlueX

2022: Arkaitz Rodas- Understanding exotic mesons

2021: Andrew Jackura- Three-Body Nuclear Phenomena from QCD

2020: Wenliang "Bill" Li - Studying the Backward-angle Physics in JLab 12 GeV and EIC

2019: Andrea Signori - Unraveling Hadronization

2018: Cristiano Fanelli - A Deep Learning Approach to Particle Identification and Alignment of the GlueX DIRC

2017: Nobuo Sato - Universal analysis of unpolarized and polarized distributions and fragmentation functions

2016: Elena Long - Probing Short-Range Interactions with a Tensor Polarized Target

2015: Raul Briceno - Exotic mesons, resonances and transition rates from quantum chromodynamics

2014: Zhihong Ye - A New Scintillating Fiber Tracker Prototype

2013: Christopher Monahan - Heavy quark physics and new physics: B and D decays on the lattice and their impact on CKM unitarity bounds

2012: Sarah Phillips - Searching for a New State of Matter: True Muonium

2011: Mark Dalton - New developments in beam properties for future Parity Violating Electron Scattering (PVES) experiments

2010: Simona Malace - Nucleon Structure at Large Bjorken x

2009: Patricia Solvignion - Future Precision Studies of Short Range Correlations

2008: Bradley Sawatzky - Quark-Gluon Correlations in the Neutron