Jefferson Science Associates, LLC Managing and Operating the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility

for the U.S. Department of Energy

FY2019 JSA Initiatives Fund Proposal Summary Sheet

Proposal title

Total leveraged support / matching funds. Details of funds must be

included in budget proposal.

Lab user: Identify University affiliation (email / phone)Joint appointee: identify University and Lab division association (email / phone)

Project End Date (month/year) Project Start Date (month/year)

Total funds requested

To be completed by JSA: Total funds awarded

Principal Investigator (PI)

Institutional affiliation Mailing address Email / phone #

Check one category: If PI is a Lab employee, your identification of the appropriate Associate Director below represents the acknowledgement of that AD with your submittal of proposal. No signature required.

Proposal: Attach file with

(1) Executive summary and technical proposal

(2) Synopsis of scientific, educational, technical, and/or business merits, and alignment with and significance to Lab’s current program

(3) Proposed evaluation plan to measure success. If this is a request for renewal of funds, assessment of prior year performance,

Your proposal may include letters of endorsement and other supporting information (maximum of 12 pages including this summary sheet and budget sheet)

New proposal

Renewal

Co-PI (if more than 1, add pages with information)

Institutional affiliation Mailing address Email / phone #

Lab employee: Identify Associate Director (email / phone)

Other: Identify Institutional affiliation (email / phone)

Amount

Subtotal Travel

Supplies

Subtotal Supplies

Consultants/Subcontracts

Subtotal Consultants/Subcontracts

Other Expenses. Examples include stipends and honoraria, prizes, awards.

Budget Proposal

Proposal Title

Principal Investigator (PI)

Total funds requested To be completed by JSA: Total funds awarded

Item DescriptionEquipment. Lab users submitting proposals that include equipment to be used at the Lab must review with the appropriate Lab Associate Director. The provision of the name of the AD below represents the AD's acknowledgement. No signature required.

Subtotal Equipment

Travel Support. Provide break-out of estimates for registration fees, lodging and transportation, catering, and facility charges (room rentals, AV equipment; etc.)

Associate Director:

Subtotal Other Expenses

Budget Justification: Include narrative to explain need for each line item in the budget, showing breakdown of calculations used to arrive at the amount in each line of the budget. Note that the JSA Initiatives Fund Program does not support salaries and salary-related expenses, or indirect expenses.

Leveraged Support/Matching Funds information. Identify the source, type and amount of dollar funds from each institution. Include separately estimated value of in-kind support. Your identification of the authorized representative who has committed institutional support for your proposal represents the acknowledgement of that individual. If support or funds are provided by the Lab, identify the associate director (or equivalent) as the authorized representative. Information may be included on separate page.

Total Budget Proposal

JSA/HUGS International Fellowship for Graduate Students in DevelopingCountries for FY2019

Cesar Fernandez-Ramırez1 and Alberto Accardi21PI, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico

2Co-PI and Director of HUGS, Jefferson Lab and Hampton University

July 15, 2018

Proposal

1 Executive summary and technical proposal

The Hampton University Graduate Studies Program (HUGS) has run this past June 2018 its 33rdedition, and has by now become an integral part of Jefferson Lab and its mission to train the futuregeneration of nuclear physicists. The HUGS program at Jefferson Lab, run by Hampton U. in closecollaboration with JLab’s Physics Division and Theory Center, is a summer school designed forexperimental or theoretical nuclear and particle physics graduate students who have finished theircoursework and have at least one year of research experience. Students who are well into a researchproject are encouraged to apply as well. Acceptance into the program is competitive, and in thelast edition 39 students attended the school out of 72 applicants.

Due to its international nature and recognized high quality, the HUGS program attracts studentsfrom different institutions, mainly from the USA and Europe. However, in the last few editions wefound a growing interest by students from Latin America and Africa, as well as India and other lesswell endowed Asian countries. Unfortunately our funding from DOE does not allow to cover travelexpenses from foreign countries to the USA, so that deserving students from foreign institutionshave to find their own means to pay for their trip to the USA. This constraint is particularly acutein the case of students from developing countries where travel funding is scarce.

In order to overcome this inequality, 4 years ago we established, with the JSA Initiatives Fundsupport, the “JSA/HUGS International Fellowship for Graduate Students in Developing Countries”to cover one or two students’ trip and one, two or three additional weeks at Jefferson Lab.

During these four years we have assessed the high demand for this kind of funding and basedon the success of the fellowship, we intend to renew program and to request funding for 2 studentsto attend the school and spend 3 additional weeks at Jefferson Lab (1 before the school, and 2after). The 2 students will be selected by the same committee that reviews the applications tothe HUGS program, which for the 2018 HUGS edition was composed of Alberto Accardi, CesarFernandez-Ramirez, Rolf Ent, Jose Goity, Cynthia Keppel, and Michael Khol.

Together with this proposal we also enclose the report on this year’s fellowship, the reports ofthis year’s fellows as well as a list of past fellows so the Initiatives Fund Evaluation Committee canevaluate the full impact of our proposal.

Letters of support from Jose Goity (Hampton U. and JLab) and Cynthia Keppel (Hall A/CJLab Leader) are also attached as well as the report provided by 2018 fellow Paul Vaandrager.

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2 Synopsis of scientific, educational, technical, and/or business merits, andalignment with and significance to Lab’s current program

The HUGS summer program at Jefferson Lab, which is run in collaboration with Hampton U. andhas become an integral and internationally recognized part of JLab, is a summer school designedfor experimental or theoretical nuclear and particle physics graduate students who have finishedtheir coursework and have at least one year of research experience.

The JSA/HUGS fellowship will expand the HUGS program allowing two students from a devel-oping country a unique opportunity, not otherwise available to them, to participate in the 3 weekslong summer school and to visit JLab for 3 additional weeks. Based on the past 4 years experience,the optimal repartition of this time is 1 week before and 2 weeks after HUGS. In the week prior tothe school, they will be able to orient themselves and make initial contacts with JLab’s studentsand researchers. The remaining 2 weeks will be spent after having received at HUGS a a top qualityadvanced training on the range of Jefferson Lab research possibilities, as to have ample time tofurther meet with Jlab researchers and users, and to initiate or strengthen a research collaboration.

If funding is allocated to the JSA/HUGS fellowship it will increase the impact of Jefferson Labthroughout the physics community, empowering researchers with a training not available in theircountries and providing a pathway to new collaborations to strengthen the laboratory’s mission.

Empowering young researchers from developing countries will also benefit the future of JeffersonLab in a more indirect, but not less important way. Through excellence, those researchers will,hopefully, improve the scientific system and increase funding for science in their own countries. Wewill help building a new generation of JLab users in countries that not many years from now couldbecome major players within the scientific community.

We see this application as a further step in the ongoing search for excellence and internationalrecognition of both HUGS and Jefferson Lab.

3 Proposed evaluation plan to measure success

The progress of the students during the school will be monitored closely by the school managersand the school director as it is done with every student that attends HUGS. In addition, the schoolmanagers will provide guidance and put the student in contact with those researchers at JeffersonLab that can help the student to pursue his or her own research interests during the additionalweeklong stay at the laboratory.

The evaluation of the success of the fellowship will be performed firstly in the same way thatthe success of the school is monitored, i.e., from direct feedback from the student during his/herstay student and secondly keeping track of the career of the student. We will also seek informationon the impact of the received training by contacting the student and the PhD advisor regularly,and keeping track of publications resulting from collaborations with JLab staff and users.

A list of past fellows, and additional information on the JSA/HUGS fellowship can be found onthe dedicated fellowship’s webpage: http://epistemia.nucleares.unam.mx/web?name=JSAHUGS.In particular we highlight that 2015 fellow, Dr. Cintia Willemyns, visited Dr. Jose Goity for anextended stay this spring, and the 2016 fellow, Mrs Sokhna Bineta Lo Amar, who came back andvisited the Physics Division for nearly 2 months last year.

4 Past Fellows tracking

Since the program started in 2015, 9 PhD students (4 women and 5 men) from developing countrieshave benefited this program. This is the full list, including their accomplishments and collaborationsafter their participation in this program, is:

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2015 Cintia Willemyns (Argentina): Explicitly thanks Jefferson Lab hospitality and researchers inthe acknowledgements of Phys. Rev. D93 (2016) 034007]. Continues her research with Dr.Jose Goity (Hampton University/Jefferson Lab). After obtaining her PhD, visited JeffersonLab in 2018 for 3 months supported by Theory Center;

2016 Sokhna Bineta Lo Amar (Senegal): Continues her research with Dr. Paul Gueye (HamptonUniversity). Visited Jefferson Lab in 2017 supported by the Physics Division;

Sangem Rajesh (India);

2017 David Molina (Colombia): defended his PhD in April 2018;

Estefania Martinez Berrueta (Argentina);

Yves Omon (Cameroon);

Esther Othieno (Kenya);

2018 Gustavo Alcala (Venezuela): Started collaborating with Dr. Alberto Accardi;

Paul Vaandrager (South Africa): Started collaborating with the JLab Theory Center’s JointPhysics Analysis Center.

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Report on FY2018

The 2018 JSA/HUGS International Fellowships were awarded to

– Mr. Gustavo Alcala, from Simon Bolivar University in Venezuela, doing his PhD on scatteringof light nuclei under the supervision of Prof. Jacinto A. Liendo.

– Mr. Paul Vaandrager, from University of Pretoria in South Africa, doing his PhD on theanalysis of nuclear systems involving Coulomb scattering.

Selection process

The fellowship was officially announced on December 15, 2017 and applications received beforethe deadline of January 30, 2018, were given full consideration. This year the fellowship had anindependent webpage (Link) with its own application process separate from the HUGS regularapplication process and a Facebook group. In this way we could use social media to promote thefellowship. The applicants had to provide a motivation letter and at least two recommendationletters to be submitted directly to the fellowship managers by the endorsers. Recommendationletters directly provided by the applicants were not accepted. We received 9 complete applications:4 from India, 1 from Argentina, 1 from South Africa, 1 from Venezuela, 1 from China, and 1 fromIndonesia.

The selection committee members (Alberto Accardi, Cesar Fernandez-Ramirez, Rolf Ent, JoseGoity, Cynthia Keppel and Michael Khol) made independent evaluations on the candidates worthfollowing the guidelines detailed in the Fellowship application and reported their own conclusions tothe rest of the committee members in through e-mail. The final selection was made by consensus.Out of the nine applicants, two outstanding students were considered worth of the fellowship:Gustavo Alcala (Venezuela) and Paul Vaandrager (South Africa), but we did not have enoughfunding to cover for all the two students. Fortunately, due to the high level of the candidates,Rolf Ent, on behalf of the Physics Division, offered additional funding to cover the stay of PaulVaandrager. The JSA funds plus the generosity of JLab’s Physics Division and matching funds fromthe DOE grant sponsoring the HUGS school, allowed two talented PhD students from developingcountries to attend 2018 HUGS and to stay three additional weeks at Jefferson Lab to start acollaboration with JLab researchers. Both students stayed from May, 19 to June 30, 2018, visitingthe Theory Center.

Budget, leveraged support and matching resources

Given the reduced budget granted to this program compared to the request, we still have been ableto support 2 students, granting them three additional weeks to visit Jefferson Lab. In detail, theawarded $4000.00 have been allocated as follows:

– $1.504,41 spent on Mr. Gustavo Alcala’s flight; $731,59 spent on Mr. Paul Vaandrager’sflight; $636,00 spent on Mr. Gustavo Alcala’s lodging; $636,00 spent on Mr. Paul Vaan-drager’s lodging; $150,00 spent on Mr. Gustavo Alcala’s meals; $150,00 spent on Mr. PaulVaandrager’s meals; and $192,00 spent on additional transportation for Mr. Gustavo Alcala.

Totaling $ 4,000.00 from JSA Initiatives Fund. Hampton University contributed a total of $3,209.80to cover lodging during HUGS and meals for the whole 5 weeks. The Physics Division contributeda total of $909,32 to cover part of Mr. Paul Vaandrager’s flight. The total cost of the program hasbeen

$4,000.00 (JSA)+ $3,209.80 (HU) + $909,32 (PHY)= $8,119.12

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Fellows activities

The fellows spent 6 weeks at Jefferson Lab. Three of these were devoted to attending the HUGSlectures and participated in all activities within the school, including scheduled social meetingswith the lecturers and delivering short presentations in front of their fellow attendees to HUGS.As supplemental material, we enclose the exit reports by Mr. Gustavo Alcala and Mr. PaulVaandrager.

Both fellows arrived one week before the HUGS program. In this way, they could could helpeach other getting acclimated and going around to make contacts at the lab. During first week,they got to understand the labs activities, and got first contact with many researchers. Then theywere fully ready to make the most out of HUGS. In the last 2 weeks they started to lay out indetail research projects for the future. Paul Vaandrager on scattering theory with the Joint PhysicsAnalysis Center and Gustavo Alcala with Prof. Accardi on nucleon structure.

Both students were provided with office space in the Theory Center where he could work andinteract with JLab researchers.

– Mr. Gustavo Alcala gave a Theory Center seminar and had meetings with the followingresearchers: Rolf Ent (Physics division), Cynthia Keppel and Jian-Ping Chen (Hall A/C), AlbertoAccardi, Raul Briceno. Jozef Dudek, Ishara Fernando, Jose Goity, Vincent Mathieu and AlessandroPilloni (JLab Theory Center), Juan Guerrero (Theory grad student), Cintia Willemyns and ArkaitzRodas (visiting researchers at Theory Center)

– Mr. Paul Vaandrager gave a Theory Center seminar and attended the weekly meetings ofthe Joint Physics Analysis Center; he started a research project with Dr. Alessandro Pilloni andvisiting PhD student Arkaitz Rodas; he furtehrmore had meetings with the following researchers:Rolf Ent (Physics division), Cynthia Keppel (Hall A/C), Jose Goity, Vincent Mathieu and Alessan-dro Pilloni (Theory Center), Cintia Willemyns and Arkaitz Rodas (visiting researchers at TheoryCenter)

Final considerations

The quality of the candidates was outstanding and awarding the fellowships proved to be a difficulttask. Nevertheless we believe we selected the best candidates and that we gave Mr. Alcala and Mr.Paul Vaandrager an opportunity for learning and career enhancement that otherwise would havenot been available to them. We are very pleased that they really took advantage of the possibilityto attend the HUGS school, intensely discuss with JLab researchers, and lay the groundwork forfuture collaborations. In our estimation this initiative has been very successful and has met all theobjectives of the proposal.

We would like to highlight the high quality level of the candidates. Our initial goal in the pro-posal was to fund two students for their trips and three additional weeks. This was achieved thanksto the generosity of the Physics Division providing additional funds and to the early advertisementof the fellowship, which allowed us to spend more effectively the funds. However, increasing costswould prevent us to provide the same conditions to future fellows if there is no increase in funding.

Besides, the fact that 2015 fellow Dr. Cintia Willemyns from Argentina visited JLab to continueher research with Prof. Jose Goity and to meet with this year’s fellows shows the potential of thisfellowship to make a mark on developing nuclear physics research in developing countries.

This shows how fellowships of this kind are in great demand and how important its impact canbe. We also would like to thank the Physics Division for providing additional funds ($909,32), thatallowed to fund two additional students to attend HUGS and visit JLab.

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July 9, 2018

Dr. Alberto Accardi July 9th, 2018Department of PhysicsHampton Universityand Cesar Fernandez RamirezInstituto de Ciencias NuclearesUniversidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico

Dear Alberto and Cesar,

I am very supportive of the proposal you are submitting to JSA for continuation of the fund-ing of foreign graduate students from developing nations to attend the HUGS summer school.HUGS is the premier graduate summer school in nuclear and hadronic physics, and is attendedby US and International students. HUGS supports local expenses and some domestic travel,but cannot support international travel. Unfortunately this limitation means that students fromdeveloping nations have to often decline their participation due to the high travel costs. Thislimits the global impact of HUGS, which is very unfortunate, as there is growing interest andparticipation of scientists of developing nations in Jefferson Lab physics. Having served for manyyears in the HUGS program, I can assure you that all students we have had from developingnations were outstanding, and the HUGS program served them very well by broadening theirknowledge and horizons.

The experience of the last four years of support by JSA could not be more positive. Allstudents who were awarded the scholarship were outstanding in their commitment and effort toreap maximum benefits from HUGS. The extended visit to JLab by the students has been shownto be very beneficial to the students, as they clearly had time to engage in discussions and evenstart projects with Jefferson Lab scientists. The JSA support has proved instrumental for thepurpose of educating young physicists from developing nations in the areas relevant to JeffersonLab physics. It is also showing the development of longer term scientific connections betweenthose young scientists and Jefferson Lab scientists. As an example, one of the first recipients ofthe fellowship, Cintia Willemyns from Buenos Aires, Argentina, who received her PhD in 2017from the University of Buenos Aires, is now a postdoc in Argentina and recently visited the JLabTheory Group for three months. She is now involved in two collaborations with members of thegroup. Indeed, the benefits of the fellowship are truly encouraging, and therefore I wish to veryenthusiastically recommend the continuation of the JSA developing country student support forthe upcoming HUGS 2019 program.

Regards,

Dr. Jose L. GoityProfessor of Physics,Hampton University, andSenior Staff Scientist,Jefferson Lab

July 11, 2018

Dear Colleagues;

I am writing this letter to express my continued support for the proposal to the JSA Initiative Funds Program for the “JSA/HUGS International Fellowship for Graduate Students in Developing Countries.” I am particularly interested in this program, having served for some years in the past as Director of the Hampton University Graduate Studies (HUGS) School. HUGS has become a successful and integral part of Jefferson Lab and its mission to train the future generation of nuclear physicists. The International Fellowship has proven to be a successful, excellent addition to this successful program.

Due to its international nature and recognized high quality, the HUGS program attracts students from different institutions around the world. We have in this regard seen a continually increasing number of applications from countries where students may have no other access to this kind of science and/or no way to take part in it if they can’t travel to the school. There is a growing interest from students in Latin America and Africa, as well as China and other less wealthy Asian countries. Unfortunately, the HUGS grant funding from the Department of Energy does not allow for coverage of travel expenses for students from foreign countries to the USA – although they can be covered once here. This restriction disproportionately has a negative effect on deserving students who do not have institutional support and may have to find their own means to pay for their trip to the USA.

Please bear with me once again sharing a rather emotional story from one of the African students who we worked with last Summer. She came here early from her home country in Africa in order to experience the laboratory and learn some electron scattering to prepare in advance for HUGS. These additional two weeks at Jefferson Lab are an essential part of the program to create future ties between the students and JLab’s research. I had an informal close-out with her to hear her thoughts about the program and how we might keep in touch to help her along with her future career if it led to nuclear science. She shared that she had no idea that such amazing ideas existed as those we probe at the laboratory and said that the Summer opened her world and that now she knew what she would dedicate her life to. I gave her then a textbook of mine that we had been using for her to learn with in advance of HUGS - at which point tears actually welled up in her eyes. This poignantly illustrated for me the huge gap in what we take for granted as far as the scientific opportunity here at the laboratory and what some students in the world experience. It is clear to me that, while this JSA/HUGS program is small, it can make a big difference for at least a few such young scientists.

Empowering young researchers from developing countries will also benefit the future of Jefferson Lab in a more indirect, but not less important way. Through excellence, those

researchers will, hopefully, improve the scientific system and increase funding for science in their own countries. They may expand the future user base into countries where we presently have no one. Funding allocated to the JSA/HUGS fellowship can increase the impact of Jefferson Lab throughout the physics community, empowering researchers with a training not available in their countries and providing a pathway to new collaborations to strengthen the laboratory's mission.

For all of the above reasons, I am pleased to lend my full support to this proposal.

Sincerely,

Cynthia Keppel, PhD Hall A and C Experimental Group Leader Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility

Natural Science 1, Room 5-66 Tel: (+27)12 420 4967 Email: University of Pretoria Cell: (+27) 84 326 2221 vaandrager.pv@gmail.com Private bag X20, Hatfield 0028 Republic of South Africa

Dear Professors Accardi & Fernández-Ramírez 30 July 2018

REPORT ON ATTENDING THE JSA/HUGS FELLOWSHIP 2018

I, Paul Vaandrager, am a PhD student in theoretical nuclear physics at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. I was privileged to be awarded The Hampton University Graduate Studies Program and Jefferson Lab Fellowship for Developing Counties (JSA/HUGS fellowship) in 2018. It took place at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab), Newport News, VA, USA from 20 May to 30 June 2018. The fellowship comprised a three week visit to JLab, where I was granted office space to work, as well as three weeks for the Hampton University Graduate Studies (HUGS) program.

My first week visiting JLab took place before the three-week HUGS programme commenced, and I enjoyed a further two-week stay after HUGS. The total of three weeks visiting JLab was essential to allow optimal networking opportunities as well as to determine definite collaborative possibilities – less time would not have been useful.

In the first week, I and my Venezuelan colleague, Gustavo Alcala (who was also awarded the 2018 fellowship) were enthusiastically welcomed by Prof Accardi, who made a huge effort to introduce us to as many researchers as possible. Apart from giving us an informative history on the lab as well as explaining his own research interest, he continuously encouraged and supported us during our stay.

Of the physicists he introduced us to, it was particularly useful to interact with senior researchers Rolf Ent, Cynthia Keppel and José Goity. Prof Goity gave an overview of the theoretical research conducted at JLab, linking each research avenue with the various experiments conducted at the lab. Professors Keppel and Ent then provided marvellous insight into the intricacies of the various experiments.

The open collaborative atmosphere at JLab was most encouraging, as we could easily approach any of the numerous researchers. They would gladly tell us about their various research projects, specifically highlighting overlap with our own research. This exposed me to a number of topics not very well represented in the scientific community in my own country, South Africa.

Apart from meeting and talking to researchers, I spent the rest of my time reading-up on topics that would be covered in the somewhat challenging HUGS programme. The three-week HUGS programme was very well organised and covered a variety of topics in experimental and theoretical nuclear physics. I particularly enjoyed the lectures on Quantum Chromodynamics by JLab director, Jianwei Qiu.

The other speakers were also of a very high standard and the organisers, Alberto Accardi, Carlota Andres, Narbe Kalantarians and admin personnel, Mary Fox, deserve commendation for their enormous efforts in running the program.

Apart from the lectures, it was especially good to meet such a variety of young PhD students from the US as well as Europe, Asia and South America also attending HUGS. A number of friendships were established which may well lead to future scientific collaboration. We enjoyed each other’s company and we happily shared details of our different research projects, cultures, foods and stories. I have never before encountered such a diversity of physics PhD students. Some students also come from difficult circumstances in their own countries and it was encouraging to hear how these difficulties were overcome.

The highlight of the program was the student talks, which were of a very high standard. I was fortunate to be awarded the prize for the third best talk, as voted by my peers, for which I am very grateful: it is always good to receive affirmation that one’s research is worthy.

Faculty of Natural & Agricultural Sciences Department of Physics

Natural Science 1, Room 5-66 Tel: (+27) 12 420 4967 Email: University of Pretoria Cell: (+27) 84 326 2221 vaandrager.pv@gmail.com Private bag X20, Hatfield 0028 Republic of South Africa

The Careers Workshop as part of the HUGS program also deserves to be mentioned: as a young scientist in a developing country I am often confronted with the stress of finding employment after graduation. The workshop offered much practical advice and encouragement.

The HUGS school also offered an opportunity to tour some of JLab facilities, like experimental Halls C and D, as well as parts of the accelerator ring. It was by far the most complex device I have ever encountered and it was impressive to see it in person, especially as we do not have the capacity to construct such large, complex pieces of equipment in my home country.

Yet my two-week stay after HUGS was likely the most productive: I presented another seminar on my own research, which was well received by the theory division of JLab, and I was able to establish a possible collaboration with JLab postdoctoral researchers Vincent Mathieu and Alessandro Pilloni, as well as visiting PhD student, Arkaitz Rodas Bilbao from Complutense University in Madrid, Spain.

Vincent, Alessandro and Arkaitz are all part the Joint Physics Analysis Center (JPAC) collaboration, headed by Professor Adam Szczepaniak from Indiana University and JLab. The primary goal of this collaboration is to determine hadronic resonance parameters from relativistic scattering data.

My own research involves extracting resonance parameters from scattering data for non-relativistic problems. Although there are significant differences in the models for determining resonances for relativistic and non-relativistic scattering, there is much overlap in the research projects conducted by JPAC and my own research.

Alessandro and Arkaitz made a considerable effort to assist me in understanding the underlying theory of relativistic scattering. With the underlying theory in place, we aim to study the pion-pion scattering system in an attempt to improve on the values of the resonance parameters for the higher energy scattering states, as well as improving on the calculations of the form factor. Such collaboration will certainly lead to a publication and I will gain further opportunities of interaction with the JPAC group, of which I intend to become a member.

If it had not been for the JSA/HUGS fellowship, I would never have had the chance to interact with the JPAC group. I am enormously excited about possible future collaborations and I am truly thankful to the selection committee of the fellowship for granting me this opportunity to develop as a researcher.

In my time at JLab I was also fortunate to meet a previous JSA/HUGS fellow, Cintia Willemyns, who has established such good relations with researchers at JLab that she has an active collaboration there. Her success has been an inspiration to me.

While there is certainly some work being done in nuclear physics at my institution, funding is limited and there is little opportunity for effective international collaboration. The JSA/HUGS fellowship has provided numerous opportunities for learning, networking, research and collaboration: I am sincerely grateful for the funding by the Jefferson Science Associates, as well as Hampton University and JLab for the support.

It is my hope that many more young PhD students from developing countries will benefit from this fellowship.

Yours sincerely,

Paul Vaandrager