A Research in Undergraduate Instituions (RUI) grant has been awarded to the Hope College Nuclear Group (under the direction of Dr. Paul DeYoung and Dr. Graham Peaslee) by the National Science Foundation to support a variety of undergraduate research projects for the next three years. The activities will center on radioactive nuclear beam (RNB) studies at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) at Michigan State University and the Nuclear Structure Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame (ND). Experiments at the NSCL will include a number of new investigations using the MoNA facility. These studies will increase our understanding of the way nuclei far from stability are constructed and interact with other matter. To prepare Hope College undergraduate students for graduate work or other scientific careers, they will be involved in every aspect of the work: experimental setup, data acquisition, analysis and modeling, and presentation of results. Undergraduates will also be involved in interdisciplinary studies based upon the new Hope College Ion Beam Analysis Laboratory (HIBAL). These projects will investigate applications of nuclear physics techniques to questions in other scientific disciplines. Our results and the results of our collaborators will be disseminated in standard journals
