Strong Interactions is a podcast about exploring a new frontier in nuclear physics at the upcoming Electron-Ion Collider (EIC).

The podcast is intended for the wider EIC community, especially students. We would like to educate new members of our community on the science program of the EIC and discuss its unique role for nuclear physics and other fields of science. We also see this as an opportunity for learning how to better communicate the EIC science to the general public.

Strong Interactions is created by Maria Żurek and Markus Diefenthaler under the auspices of the EIC User Group.

Maria Żurek

Maria is an Assistant Physicist at Argonne National Laboratory trying to unravel the mystery of the origin of the spin of the proton with the STAR and CLAS12 experiments and the future Electron-Ion Collider facility. Her academic interest focuses on eperimentally exploring the nature of the strong interaction and the way it manifests itself in the properties and interactions of hadrons. She likes getting her hands dirty with jets, calorimetry, and tricky cross-section measurements.

Markus Diefenthaler

Markus is a Staff Scientist at Jefferson Lab. He is known internationally for his work in the area of nuclear physics, especially as it relates to the experimental investigation of the quark-gluon structure of the nucleon. He is currently working on the Electron-Ion Collider and coordinating simulation efforts for the ongoing development of the science program and detectors of the frontier nuclear physics facility. In addition to that, he is addressing challenges of autonomous control and experimentation in his research on a responsive, self-calibrating detector system.

Acknowledgment

• We thank Simon Taylor (Jefferson Lab) for composing the Strong Interactions soundtrack and allowing us to use “Mustermark” for our intro and outro. His compositions are available on SoundCloud.
• We thank Azizah Mahmood (University of Regina) for recording our jingle.
• We thank Javier Villalpando for the Strong Interactions logo.
• We thank Lindsay McCargar for producing the Strong Interactions episodes.
• We thank Ludovico Bianchi (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab) for help with the website.