Affiliate Associate Professor, Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, Michigan State University

Website: kgleach.org
Email:  kleach@mines.edu

Phone: (303) 273 3044

Fax: (303) 273 3919

Office: CK 310

Ph.D.  –  University of Guelph, Canada

Recent Teaching Assignments:

• PHGN 422: Nuclear Physics (Fall 2023)
• PHGN 501/601: Graduate Seminar (Fall 2023)
• PHGN 504: Radiation Detection and Measurement (Spring 2022)
• PHGN 100: Physics-I Mechanics (Spring 2020)

Research Interests:

• High-precision tests of the Standard Model
• Novel searches for keV-scale sterile neutrinos
• Neutrinoless double beta decay
• Radioactive decay of highly charged exotic ions
• Technical development of radiation detection techniques in nuclear physics

Professional Experience and Activities:

After completing his PhD in 2013, Dr. Leach accepted a Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at the TRIUMF facility in Vancouver, Canada, performing novel in-trap decay spectroscopy studies on highly charged radioactive ions with the TITAN collaboration.  Dr. Leach is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at the Colorado School of Mines, Head of the Electroweak Interactions (EI) Group, and Spokesperson for the BeEST Experiment.  In addition to work locally at Mines, the EI group’s research is performed at TRIUMF (Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics) in Vancouver, Canada, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at Michigan State University.

Dr. Leach is a referee for numerous international research journals, and reviews funding applications for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and National Science Foundation (NSF).  He has served as an ex-officio member on the Advisory Committee on TRIUMF (ACOT) which reports to the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), and recently a member of the TRIUMF 5 year plan (2020-2025) steering committee.  Dr. Leach was also elected Chair of the TRIUMF Users’ Group Executive Committee (TUEC) in 2015, and has served as Chair-Elect (2016), Chair (2017), and Past-Chair (2018).  The research program of Dr. Leach has been recognized with several awards, including the 2020 U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Research Award and being named a 2019 FRIB Visiting Scholar, and he is also a Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Experimental Physics Investigator.   From 2016 – 2021 he was the Head of Graduate Admissions in the Department of Physics and is a member of the Institutional Research Advisory Board at the Colorado School of Mines.   Dr. Leach currently serves on the DOE/NSF NSAC Long Range Plan Committee which develops the decadal plan for nuclear science in the U.S.

Professional Memberships

• Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP) – Since 2006
• American Physical Society (APS) – Since 2006
• TRIUMF Users Group (TUG) – Since 2006
• ATLAS Users Group (Argonne National Laboratory) – Since 2008
• Canadian Institute for Nuclear Physics (CINP) – Since 2008
• Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) Users Group – Since 2012

Professional Collaborations:

• The BeEST (Berylium Electron-capture with Superconducting Tunnel junctions)
• nEXO Collaboration (Next Generation Enriched Xenon Observatory)
• Gamma-Ray Infrastructure for the Fundamental Investigation of Nuclei (GRIFFIN) at TRIUMF
• TRIUMF’s Ion Traps for Atomic and Nuclear Science (TITAN) at TRIUMF
• Radioactive Decay Station at FRIB
• SOLenoid spectrometer Apparatus for ReactIon Studies (SOLARIS) at FRIB/Argonne

Funding Sources and Partners:
                    
 

Email: ddiercks@mines.edu  

Ph.D. (Mat. Sci.) – University of North Texas
M.S. (Mat. Sci.) – University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
B.S. (Ceramic Engineering) – University of Illinois Urbana Champaign 

Research interests:
– Using correlated micro- and nano-scale materials characterization techniques for the determination of composition and structure and relating those to performance.

Dr. Diercks is Director of the Shared Instrumentation Facility, has been a Research Associate Professor in the George S. Ansell Metallurgical and Materials Engineering Department at the Colorado School of Mines, and holds an affiliate research appointment at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Prior to Mines, Diercks was Manager of the Center for Advanced Research and Technology at the University of North Texas (UNT).  He earned his Ph.D in Materials Science and Engineering from UNT, an MS in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign (UIUC), and a BS in Ceramic Engineering from UIUC.  Dr. Diercks is the lead member of the EI Group’s work in materials characterization for rare-isotope doped superconducting sensors.

Email: 

Ph.D. – Massachusetts Institute of Technology
B.S. – University of Nebraska at Omaha

Awards:
– NASA Group Achievement Award (2020)
– NSF GRFP (2018)
– Robert Lourie Fellowship (2017)
– Outstanding Physics Major – UNO (2017)

Research interests:
– Neutrino Physiscs
– Astroparticle Physics

Deputy Group Leader, Rare Event Detection Group
Senior Staff Scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Ph.D., Applied Physics, Yale University
M.S., Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder
VorDiplom, Physics, University of Tübingen, Germany

Stephan’s research interests include the development of high-resolution superconducting x-ray and gamma-ray spectrometers and their application in material science, nuclear physics, astronomy, and national security.  Stephan is a key collaboratory on the BeEST and SALER experiments.

Senior Scientist, TRIUMF

Ph.D., Nuclear Physics, University of Surrey
B.Sc., Physics, University of Manchester, UK

Adam’s research interests and expertise are in the field of experimental low-energy nuclear structure physics. He led the operation of the 8pi spectrometer at TRIUMF until Dec 2013, and oversaw all on-site activities related to the development, construction, and installation of the GRIFFIN spectrometer at TRIUMF during the 2011-2015 period. Since 2014 he has been responsible for operation of GRIFFIN at TRIUMF for decay-spectroscopy studies.  Adam also led the development of the innovative SPICE in-beam conversion electron spectrometer for use with TIGRESS.  His current research interest is centralized around combined electron and gamma-ray spectroscopy to measure electric monopole transition strengths which are a sensitive probe of shape-mixing effects in atomic nuclei.  Adam is a key collaborator on the two-photon decay work at TRIUMF.

Email: cstonewhitehead@mines.edu

B.Sc. – Colorado School of Mines

Caitlyn’s research interests include:

• Superconducting sensors development and simulations for the BeEST and SALER experiments

DOE SCGSR Fellow

Currently stationed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Email: cbray@mines.edu

B.Sc. & M.S. – Colorado School of Mines

Connor’s research interests include:

• Heavy neutrino studies using superconducting quantum sensors
• Low-energy simulations of radiation in superconducting detectors

Email: cnharris@mines.edu

B.S. – U.S. Air Force Academy
M.S. – Air Force Institute of Technology

Cameron’s research interests include:

• Precision materials characterization for ion-beam implantation into thin film quantum sensors

Email: dakota_keblbeck@mines.edu 

B.S. – University of Denver (Computer Engineering)

Ben’s research interests include:

• Software integration and development for superconducting sensing experiments in subatomic physics