Dr. Rogers joined the IWU physics department in Fall 2016. He conducts National Science Foundation funded research with undergraduate students in the area of experimental nuclear physics. He grew up in California and has two children living in the Pacific Northwest.

Research Interests

Dr. Rogers has mentored over 40 undergraduate students in research, many of whom are co-authors on his research publications. To date, 15 have earned doctoral degrees and 4 have earned masters degrees in science and engineering. He conducts research in the area of experimental nuclear physics. He is a co-founding member of the Modular Neutron Array (MoNA) Collaboration centered at Michigan State University, made up of physicists from 8 primarily undergraduate institutions and Michigan State University.

The primary branch of his research is based at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) (formerly the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory), a national laboratory operated by the Department of Energy, located on the Michigan State University campus. In 2002 undergraduate students in the collaborating institutions together constructed 144 large neutron detectors that are combined into a large MoNA array. In 2010 a new set of students constructed an additional 144 neutron detectors for an array called LISA (Large multi-Institutional Scintillator Array), also consisting of 144 neutron detectors.

The collaboration uses these arrays to detect neutrons arising from the decay of exotic nuclei. The focus of this research program is to investigate the properties of exotic neutron-rich nuclei using an accelerator-based technique called Invariant Mass Spectroscopy. Measurements of the properties of these exotic nuclei will ultimately contribute to better understanding explosive astrophysical events, such as super-novae and neutron star mergers.

The second branch of his research program is based at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Experiments conducted there are focused on measuring the scattering characteristics of neutrons in organic plastic scintillator, which is of central importance in the operation our neutron detectors and our analysis of data collected by the array.

Honors and Awards

• 2006 Appointed Fellow, American Physical Society
• 2009 Distinguished Service Award, Division of Nuclear Physics, American Physical Society
• 2018 Prize for a Faculty Member for Research in an Undergraduate Institution, American Physical Society

Personal

He is a lover of music and plays classical piano regularly. He’s developed a course on the topic of the Physics of Music, which brings together two areas of deep interest for him, and for which he’s written an unpublished textbook.