UK's Renee Fatemi named Fellow of American Physical Society

Renee Fatemi, professor in the University of Kentucky Department of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), the nation's preeminent organization of physicists.

Selection as a Fellow of the APS demonstrates exceptional accomplishments and contributions to the field of physics. Less than half of 1% of the APS membership receive the honor each year. 

Fatemi is being honored for “contributions to the understanding of the spin and momentum structure of quarks and gluons in the proton through the novel development and application of jet reconstruction tools in polarized proton collisions.”

Fatemi’s research focuses on accelerator based nuclear and particle physics. She is currently a member of the STAR Collaboration at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Her APS fellowship was awarded based on her work with the STAR Collaboration.

"I am thrilled and honored to be elected a Fellow of the APS," Fatemi said. "It is very satisfying to be recognized for a research program that was seeded and built during my early years here at UK. I am very lucky to work in such a vibrant scientific community and to be a member of a department that has always valued and supported my research interests."

Last year, Fatemi helped lead a UK team of faculty and students in a major experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) g-2 collaboration. The landmark results changed how physicists understand the subatomic world, revealing that fundamental particles, called muons, behave in a way not predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. Fatemi says this could be caused by the existence of undiscovered particles or forces. Read more about the discovery and her team's work here.

“Professor Fatemi is an internationally-recognized scientific leader in experimental nuclear physics,” said Brad Plaster, chair of the UK Department of Physics and Astronomy. “Professor Fatemi’s election to Fellowship in the American Physical Society is a wonderful achievement not only for her, but also for the Department of Physics and Astronomy, who could not be prouder to count Professor Fatemi among our faculty. We look forward to following the evolution of her research program to the new Electron Ion Collider facility under construction at Brookhaven National Laboratory.”