John Terry, a Physics & Astronomy graduate student, has received the
prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP) Award, which recognizes and supports talented students in the early
phase of their graduate career to become leaders in research and innovation.
GRFP provides awardees with three years of financial support, consisting of a $34,000 annual stipend and a $12,000 education allowance. Fellows are also connected to opportunities for international research collaboration through the Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide (GROW) initiative, and to professional career development through the federal Graduate Research Internship Program (GRIP).
John is currently working with Prof. Zhongbo Kang on Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) and High Energy Nuclear Theory. "This is a well-deserved honor," said Prof. Kang, "I’m very proud of his accomplishments, and look forward to what the future will bring."
QCD is the fundamental theory of strong interactions by which elementary particles form the internal structure of nucleons. While the fundamental laws of QCD are elegantly concise, the precise mechanisms by which quarks and gluons interact to form the particles seen in nature remain mysterious and only partially understood. John's proposed research aims to develop and improve QCD theoretical formalism in terms of a new class of quark and gluon distributions inside the nucleon, which can be used to interpret new experimental data and to extract useful information about nucleon structure from the major experimental facilities such as the Jefferson Lab, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, and a future Electron Ion Collider.
This research will also help make more precise computations and/or predictions for Higgs and W/Z bosons at the Large Hadron Collider.