2020 LUG Executive Committee Election

Adrian Brügger’s research interests lie in experimental mechanics of materials by conventional and diffraction methods as related to structures of all types. Brügger serves as the Director of the Robert A. W. Carleton Strength of Materials Laboratory of Columbia University, a materials laboratory that supports not only the research and teaching in civil engineering and engineering mechanics but also performs testing for the global engineering community.

Brügger’s research focuses on the

1. dynamic health monitoring of structures,
2. residual stress & contact stress mapping of multi-body systems (cables, anchoring systems, etc.), 
3. eigenstrain analysis of contact problems of thermally incompatible interfaces,
4. cementitious materials and other composites,
5. characterization of materials under high temperature, and
6. optimization of metals AM prints using experimental data.

Danielle Schaper received her undergraduate degree in physics from Berea College and is a graduate student at the University of Kentucky and a graduate research assistant in the scattering team of the MST-8 group at LANL. She is highly involved in neutron physics research, and is particularly interested in the neutron due to its broad applications in tackling problems in both fundamental and applied physics. Her thesis research focuses on using the neutron as a probe for fundamental symmetries and Beyond the Standard Model physics; she is a member of the NOPTREX collaboration which seeks to measure evidence of time-reversal-invariance violating processes in resonances of compound nuclei and has worked on precision measurements of parity violation present in heavy nuclei at the Lujan Center's FP12 beamline for 2 years. She has also assisted on related projects such as the NDTGamma collaboration.

In addition, she is interested in the more applied uses for neutrons such as neutron radiography or microstructural characterization using neutron diffraction; she is currently collaborating with scientists from LANL and other institutions such as Sandia-Livermore and the Paul-Scherrer Institute on fast neutron imaging techniques and materials characterization and is helping to develop methods to characterize the relatively new technology of laser-driven neutron sources.

She is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow (NSF GRFP) and received a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Fellowship to work on neutron-nuclei reactions at JPARC.  She has served on the American Physical Society Forum of Graduate Student Affairs (APS FGSA) as a Member-at-Large and as the FGSA liaison for the Committee on the Status for Women in Physics. She has also been an active member on the Graduate Student Committee at her home institution, and regularly participates in outreach work and advocacy.

Because of the broad range of her research interests, the collaborative scope of her work (both at the local, national, and international scale) as well as her personal investment in LANSCE, she has an especial focus on promoting LANSCE as a flagship scientific institution and fostering collaboration between LANSCE's unique neutron capabilities and the needs and capabilities of other institutions. In particular, she is interested in cultivating the overlap between fundamental and applied measurements, strengthening the relationships between LANSCE and external institutions, and the advocacy and integration of graduate student research with the long-term goals of the facility.