Two Baruch Professors Receive $400k to Study First Moments After the Big Bang

July 19, 2021

Two Baruch College theoretical physicists— Jamal Jalilian-Marian, PhD and Adrian Dumitru, PhD, have probing questions about the early Universe. Now, a recently awarded $400,000 grant from the United States Department of Energy will fund their research that focuses on understanding the conditions that may have existed in the early Universe, a few microseconds after the Big Bang.

The two-year grant, funded by the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Physics Program, is a continuation of a previous grant to support a research project, currently using the working title, “High-Energy Quantum Chromodynamics in Heavy-Ion Collisions.” Drs. Jalilian-Marian and Dumitru are professors in the Department of Natural Sciences at the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences.

So far, the pair have received a total of about $1.75 million in funding from the Department of Energy to support their work.

As theoretical physicists, Dumitru and Jalilian-Marian develop models and theories to interpret experimental data obtained at specialized research sites around the world, including a few different particle accelerators that have garnered much media attention over the last few decades.

These particle accelerators, including the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at the Brookhaven National Lab in Long Island, can help physicists simulate and even recreate certain events that occurred in the early Universe.

Ultimately, Dumitru and Jalilian-Marian hope to make predictions for the outcome of future experiments that will take place at the Electron-Ion Collider, a new facility currently approved for development at the Brookhaven National Lab.

Two of Baruch’s premier theoretical physicists have questions about the early Universe –– one can only imagine the answers that await them.

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