Speaker: Cameron Dean

Host: Marzia Rosati

Title: Probing Nuclear Matter with Heavy Flavor Particles

Abstract: One of the fundamental questions posed by physicists today is the nature of matter at high densities and temperatures, and how it can be used to tell us about the formation of the universe. Dedicated facilities at CERN and Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) can produce matter under such conditions, known as Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at BNL began operations in 2000 and has made several key discoveries and observations related to QGP formation. The detectors at RHIC have also undergone various upgrades, pushing QGP research from discovery to precision measurements. As RHIC ceased operations in February 2026, it is important to look at what the data collected at RHIC can tell us about this substance. Now with the electron-ion collider (EIC) coming online in the 2030’s, how can the results and methods used at RHIC help us understand nuclear structure at the EIC?

Bio: Cameron Dean is a senior postdoctoral researcher at MIT’s Laboratory for Nuclear Science, specializing in QGP formation in heavy ion collisions. His research involves using the decays of heavy flavor hadrons to probe the properties of QGP and designing silicon vertex detectors to measure precise properties of those decays. He obtained his Master’s degree from the University of Edinburgh in 2014, his PhD from the University of Glasgow in 2019, and was previously a postdoc at Los Alamos National Laboratory before joining MIT in 2022.