DOE Physicists at Work Archive

DOE Physicists at Work

Profiles of representative DOE-sponsored physicists
doing research at universities and national laboratories

Compiled by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Winston Roberts

What holds a nucleus together? That question, asked by his high school chemistry teacher, inspired a young Winston Roberts to an eventual career in physics as a full professor at Old Dominion University and a member of the Theory Group at the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Laboratory (JLab).

"My late high school chemistry teacher, E. Norman Lambert, is the one who got me interested in this kind of question," said Dr. Roberts, who was born in Port of Spain on the island of Trinidad.  While attending high school at the Queen's Royal College, one of the island's most renowned high schools, Dr. Roberts decided to major in physics for his undergraduate studies, which were pursued at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada.  This was made possible through a scholarship from the government of Trinidad and Tobago.  "The scholarship was a wonderful opportunity, as I would never have been able to afford this," said Dr. Roberts.

In his graduating year at Dalhousie, Dr. Roberts received the University Medal for finishing atop the physics graduating class, along with the Governor General's Gold Medal.  He then went to Guelph, Ontario, about 90 minutes from Toronto, for his Ph. D.  His first year at Guelph was spent at Oxford University.  Dr. Roberts completed his Ph. D. in 1988 with Dr. Gabriel Karl, then spent one year as a research associate in Grenoble, France, followed by about 18 months at Harvard University.  "By this time, I was a permanent resident of Canada, and had received an NSERC Fellowship that would allow me to conduct research anywhere in the world," said Dr. Roberts.  Since his appointment at Old Dominion University, he has also been awarded a "National Young Investigator" award by the National Science Foundation.  "That award allowed me a lot of independence, as I could design my research program as I thought appropriate," said Dr. Roberts.

Dr. Roberts' research focuses on what is known as "hadronic physics" and, not surprisingly, is related to the heart of that question asked so many years ago in Trinidad - the nucleus.

"Basically, I'm trying to understand the way in which quarks make up the proton and neutron, and all of their relatives, and how these particles behave," said Dr. Roberts.  "Some of my projects are directly related to the mission of JLab and the DOE, such as calculations for processes that will be measured there.  DOE's Office of Nuclear Physics provides support for "the community of scientists who seek to understand the fundamental forces and particles of nature as manifested in nuclear matter.

"So has the question that brought Dr. Roberts into his field of research - What holds a nucleus together? - been answered?

"We now have a good idea of what holds the nucleus together, but there are many details we're still trying to understand.  In my current research, I am looking at things one layer deeper, exploring how the proton and neutron (the particles that make up all the matter that most of us ever 'see') are made out of quarks," said Dr. Roberts.

Dr. Roberts currently receives funding from the DOE through his position at JLab, and he understands funding questions from the point of view of the funding agencies as well.  He has served as a program officer at the National Science Foundation and is currently on leave in the Office of Nuclear Physics at the Department of Energy, helping to make funding decisions in nuclear theory.  

In addition to his scientific and administrative endeavors, Dr. Roberts is an avid woodworker, with a preference for working with exotic woods.  Some of his creations can be seen on his website at http://www.knottyprofessor.com/.

Dr. Roberts' home page

Dr. Roberts articles accessed via OSTI:

Information Bridge

A Model for Two-Pion Photoproduction Amplitudes

Heavy Quark Effective Theory

 

Energy Citations Database

Color-Singlet Quark-Pair Transmutation:  Helicity Amplitudes and Partial-Wave Analysis

String-Breaking Model for Production

 

Baryon-Antibaryon Decays of Four-Quark States

 

Can Four-Quark States Be Easily Detected in Baryon-Antibaryon Scattering?

 

Simple Tests of the Factorization Assumption

 

Heavy Quark Symmetries and the Decays B Baryon+Antibaryon

decays of baryons in a relativized model

 

Heavy mass expansion in decaysQuasi-two-body decays of nonstrange baryons

 

Relativistic Chiral Quark Model for Pseudoscalar Emission From Heavy Mesons

 

r polarization and model independent extraction of |Vub|/|Vcd| from D and B

 

E-print Network 

A Phenomenological Lagrangian Approach to Two Kaon Photoproduction and Pentaquark Searches

 

Polarization Observables in

 

Polarization Observables for Two-Pion Production off the Nucleon

 

A Vision for Nuclear Theory:  Report to NSAC

 

Radiative Transitions in Heavy Mesons in a Relativistic Quark Model

 

Quark Models of Baryon Masses and Decays

 

Phenomenological Study of Strong Decays of Heavy Hadrons in Heavy Quark Effective Theory

 

Evidence for the Fourth P11 Resonance Predicted by the Constituent Quark Model

 

A Relativistic Chiral Quark Model for Pseudoscalar Emission From Heavy Mesons

 

Strange Decays of Nonstrange Baryons

 

Strong Decays of Heavy Hadrons In HQET

 

A Model For Two-Pion Photoproduction Amplitudes

 

Meson Decays In A Quark Model

 

New Baryons in the and Channels

 

HQET and Form Factor Effects in

 

Application of HQET to Transitions

 

Heavy Mesons In A Relativistic Model

 

Soft Pion Emission in Semileptonic B-Meson Decays