Caryn Palatchi, now an Assistant Professor at Indiana University, has been recognized for work she performed while a graduate student and postdoctoral scholar at UVa with the 2024 Stuart J. Freedman Award in Experimental Nuclear Physics. Professor Palatchi’s award citation reads:
For contributions to the measurement of the weak nuclear form factors, including the development of improved systems for controlling polarized electron beams.

The Freedman award was established in 2016 by the American Physical Society Division of Nuclear Physics to recognize Dr. Freedman’s legacy as a mentor to early career physicists. It is presented annually to an outstanding early career experimentalist in nuclear physics.

Caryn arrived at UVa as a graduate student in 2014 and started investigations of polarized laser optics for electron beam source with Professor Kent Paschke. From this work, she developed techniques for sub-nanometer stability of beam position under polarization reversal which enable next-generation precision measurement of parity violation in electron scattering. In particular, she developed essential technologies for the MOLLER experiment, an ultra-precise search for new physics which is currently under construction at Jefferson Lab.

She graduated with a Ph.D. in 2019. While a postdoctoral research associate at UVa in 2019 and 2020, she led the effort to control beam asymmetries during the PREX-2 and CREX measurements of weak nuclear form factors in the neutron-rich ²⁰⁸Pb and ⁴⁸Ca nuclei. These results provide an important complement to the existing nuclear structure data set, and have proved to be a difficult constraint to incorporate into most existing models of nuclear structure.

In 2022, Caryn joined the faculty at Indiana University to continue her research program in nuclear and electroweak physics.

For more, see https://www.aps.org/funding-recognition/award/stuart-jay-freedman-award.