Biography

Dr. Papavassiliou conducts accelerator-based research in experimental, high-energy, nuclear and particle physics, with emphasis on the structure of the nucleon and the strong interaction. Dr. Papavassiliou is a participant in the PHENIX experiment in the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Lab, which is searching for evidence for the formation, under extreme conditions of temperature and pressure, of a new state of matter known as the quark-gluon plasma. He also has a keen interest in the study of the internal spin structure of the proton, and especially the role played by gluons, which can be studied in polarized proton-nucleus collisions at the same accelerator. Dr. Papavassiliou is also a member of the MicroBooNE neutrino experiment at the Fermi National Accelerator Lab, a 170-ton, liquid-argon, time-projection chamber which is studying the fundamental properties of the neutrinos, especially oscillations between different neutrino flavors; as well as using the neutrino beam to probe the structure of the nucleon and the nucleus.