Barbara Jacak

Barbara Jacak (Polish pronunciation: [ˈjat͡sak]) is a nuclear physicist who uses heavy ion collisions for fundamental studies of hot, dense nuclear matter. She is director of the Nuclear Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and a professor of physics at UC Berkeley. Before going to Berkeley, she was a member of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook University, where she held the rank of distinguished professor. She is a leading member of the collaboration that built and operates the PHENIX detector, one of the large detectors that operated at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and was involved in the discovery of the quark gluon plasma and its strongly coupled, liquid-like behavior. Throughout her career she has served on many advisory committees and boards, including the National Research Council Committee on Nuclear Physics, and the Physical Review C editorial board.