CETUP* Science Discussion

Julia Gehrlein is an assistant professor in the Physics Department at Colorado State University. Her expertise is in theoretical particle physics and her studies center around the most elusive particles of the Universe, neutrinos. Before joining Colorado State University she was a Senior Research Fellow in the Theoretical Physics department at CERN, Switzerland, and a research associate at  Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York. She obtained her PhD in 2019 from the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain.

Vishvas Pandey is a Wilson Fellow Associate Scientist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. His research lies at the intersection of particle and nuclear physics, combining experimental and theoretical approaches to advance our understanding of neutrino interactions with matter and to explore new physics beyond the Standard Model. At Fermilab, his primary focus is on maximizing the scientific output of liquid argon–based neutrino experiments, including the SBND experiment, where he serves as co-convener of a physics working group, and DUNE. He also coordinates the Neutrino Physics Center, co-leads the DOE SULI program at Fermilab, and serves on the board of the NuSTEC collaboration. Prior to joining Fermilab in 2022, he was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Florida (2019–2022), contributing to SBND and the CCM experiment. During his earlier postdoctoral tenure at the Center for Neutrino Physics at Virginia Tech (2016–2019), he played key roles in the JLab Hall A electron–argon scattering experiment and was involved in the protoDUNE and MicroBooNE experiments. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics from Ghent University, Belgium, in 2016, focusing on modeling neutrino–nucleus interactions for accelerator-based neutrino experiments.

Sheng Fong is a Malaysian physicist and professor at the Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC) in Brazil. He earned bachelor's degrees in Physics and Mathematics from Michigan Technological University and a Ph.D. in Physics from Stony Brook University. Following his doctorate, he held postdoctoral research positions at Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati in Italy and the Universidade de São Paulo before joining UFABC as a professor in 2018.

Fong's research explores some of the biggest questions in modern physics and cosmology, including how the early universe evolved to become matter-dominated, why neutrinos have such tiny masses, and the nature of dark matter.