Department of Physics

Caryn Palatchi will join the IU physics department faculty as an assistant professor in fall 2022. She earned her BS in physics at Caltech, where she worked on LIGO, a MS in physics at Ohio State, where she explored nonlinear optics with attosecond laser-atom probes, a PhD from Virginia, and a succession of one-year postdoc appointments at Virginia, Stony Brook, and Jefferson Lab. Caryn’s scientific research program will use polarized electron beams at Jefferson Lab to conduct precision measurements in nuclear and particle physics. Her PhD and postdoc work in the PREX-2 and CREX collaborations measured the “neutron skin” of lead and calcium, an essential piece of information needed to understand the compressibility of neutron stars. Caryn's research program at IUB will support the MOLLER experiment now in preparation at Jefferson Lab, which will conduct a precision measurement of parity violation in polarized electron scattering from electrons to search for physics beyond the Standard Model. She plans to establish an optics lab at MESH to further improve her patented Pockels cell device to generate and control electron polarization using polarized light-induced photoemission from gallium arsenide.