Two Arts & Sciences Faculty Selected As 2024 Chancellor’s EDGES Fellows
Mahapatra joined the Texas A&M Department of Physics and Astronomy in 2008 after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 2000 and completing postdoctoral work at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A member of the George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy, he is an international expert in high-energy particle physics and dark matter and has considerable expertise in building particle detectors and related data analysis.
A 2010 Department of Energy Early Career Research Award recipient, Mahapatra has served since 2003 as a principal investigator with the international Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS) experiment and the affiliated SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment, a world leader in the search for elusive weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). In 2017, he also founded a new world-class experiment, the Mitchell Institute Neutrino Experiment at Reactor (MINER) housed at the Texas A&M Nuclear Science Center, that utilizes cutting-edge low threshold detectors developed at Texas A&M to precisely measure background signals while also searching for new interactions beyond what is known to exist in the Standard Model of particle physics. He currently is involved in developing next-generation dark matter detectors made of germanium semiconductors with Transition Edge Sensors utilizing state of the art semiconductor device fabrication instruments in his laboratories.
Mahapatra’s diverse background in particle physics experimentation also has led him into new areas of applied research beyond dark matter and high energy detector research and development, including medical imaging. He has built early prototypes of new-generation positron emission tomography (PET) scan detectors and submitted proposals to fund such work that promises to provide more accurate imaging technology. His research has the potential to deliver earlier diagnostics of diseases such as Alzheimer’s by looking for tau-proteins (bio markers) that are smaller in size than current-generation PET scanners can detect but within the reach of more accurate, next-generation PET scanners that utilize more sophisticated particle physics experimental techniques.
Fang and Mahapatra, both of whom are also Presidential Impact Fellows, are among 14 current or former Texas A&M Arts and Sciences faculty honored to date as EDGES Fellows, joining Dr. Sheela Athreya (Anthropology), Dr. Sarah Brooks (Atmospheric Sciences), Dr. Gil Rosenthal and Dr. Joseph Sorg (Biology), Dr. Sarbajit Banerjee and Dr. Wenshe Ray Liu (Chemistry), Dr. Sarah Zubairy (Economics), Dr. Wendy Jepson (Geography), Dr. Sonia Hernández (History), Dr. Kenny Easwaran (Philosophy), Dr. Alexei Safonov (Physics and Astronomy) and Dr. Holly Foster (Sociology).
Learn more about Chancellor’s EDGES Fellowships or faculty excellence in the College of Arts and Sciences.
This story source was originally published by Texas A&M Arts & Sciences.