Assistant Professor of Physics Pavel Snopok

Pavel Snopok, assistant professor of physics at IIT and associate scientist at Fermilab National Accelerator Lab, has been awarded funding under the prestigious Office of Science of the Department of Energy (DOE) Early Career Research Program to do research on muon accelerators. The program provides funding for outstanding early-career scientists at universities and DOE national laboratories, for support and development of their individual research projects. The award, now in its third year, is quite competitive, and this year 68 scientists were selected through a peer review of around 850 proposals.

Snopok’s project for which he will receive funding is titled, “Advanced Simulation Tools for Muon-Based Accelerators” and was selected for funding by the Office of High Energy Physics. According to his abstract, “The objective of this project is to develop new modeling tools based on modern software frameworks, G4beamline and COSY Infinity, and to incorporate the most accurate theoretical calculations and experimental data available for crucial and not-yet-considered physics processes specific to muon accelerators.” The study will demonstrate the accuracy in which the tools used to assess a muon collider or a neutrino factory represent the performance of a real machine.

Snopok’s expertise is in beam physics, accelerator physics, advanced accelerator design and simulation, nonlinear dynamical system analysis, normal form methods, mathematical modeling, numerical methods, and optimization methods. His current projects include six-dimensional cooling channel simulations for the Muon Collider; Neutrino Factory front end energy deposition analysis and mitigation strategy; and Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment wedge absorber studies. Snopok earned his M.S. and Ph.D. from both Michigan State and Saint Petersburg State University, Russia. He is a member of the American Physical Society.