AccApp’21 Conference Organizers

General Chair
Dr. Lin Shao

Dr. Lin Shao is Robert Cochran University Professor at the Department of Nuclear Engineering, Texas A&M University (TAMU). He received his PhD in Physics from the University of Houston in 2001. He was a director funded postdoc at Los Alamos National Laboratory prior to joining TAMU in 2004. Currently he directs Accelerator Laboratory at Texas A&M University, which is one NSUF user facility. He is currently Secretary of Accelerator Applications Division of ANS, and an ANS fellow. He received IBMM prize in 2006, NSF career award in 2009, and numerous teaching and research awards at TAMU. He has graduated 17 Ph.D. students, all related to radiation materials science. He was PI or co-PI for more than 42 research projects and published about 240 journal papers. He is also an inventor of 9 US patents, all related to accelerator applications. He was Conference Chair of both IBMM 2018 and REM 10.

General Co-Chair
Dr. Philip Cole

Dr. Philip Cole received his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1991. He is a Professor and Chair of the Physics Department at Lamar University. He was a postdoctoral researcher (1991-1994) and an Assistant Research Professor (1995-1997) at George Washington University. Between those two periods at GWU, he was a visiting scientist (1994-1995) at the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (Genoa, Italy) and Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique (Gif sur Yvette, France). Cole held a JLab-Bridged Assistant Professorship at the University of Texas at El Paso (1997-2004) and received the 1999 NSF CAREER Award in Nuclear Physics. In 2002 he was honored as the Society of Physics Students (SPS) Advisor of the Year. In 2014/2015 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Bonn. He has been the General Chair for three iterations of the International Topical Meeting on the Applications of Accelerators – AccApp'15, AccApp'17, and AccApp'20. He is a member of both the CLAS Collaboration (Hall B) and the GlueX (Hall D) Collaboration at JLab (Newport News, VA) and a member of the BGOOD Collaboration at ELSA (Bonn, Germany). He has received over $3M in NSF funding, and has graduated 3 PhD and 4 Master’s students in fundamental and applied nuclear physics over the course of his career. He has over 220 publications and 1 US patent related to nuclear applications of accelerators.

General Co-Chair
Dr. Valeriia Starovoitova

Dr. Valeriia Starovoitova received her Ph.D. at Purdue University and did her postdoctoral training at Idaho Accelerator Center (IAC), Idaho State University. She was involved in several applied nuclear physics projects, including the feasibility of photonuclear production of isotopes, nuclear waste transmutation, and photon activation analysis. In 2013 she was invited to join Niowave, Inc., a company that delivers and commissions superconducting electron accelerators. Dr. Starovoitova's task was to establish and lead the Applied Physics Group, which by 2018 grew to ten researchers, including nuclear physicists and engineers, radiochemists, health physicists, and material scientists. In 2018 Dr. Starovoitova started working at IAEA as a Radiation Technology Coordination Officer. Her current work is focused on the assessment of alternative radiation technologies, particularly uses of particle accelerators to replace high activity sources for medical device sterilization, food irradiation, and material processing. In addition to the aforementioned work, for over 15 years, Dr. Starovoitova has been teaching various physics and radiation technology courses as well as mentoring students conducting research for their theses and capstone projects – at Purdue University, Idaho State University, and World Nuclear University.

Publication Chair
Dr. William Horak

William Horak is and emeritus scientist in the Nuclear Science and Technology Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory since October 1, 2020. William Horak has a B.S. in aeronautical and astronautical engineering and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the University of Illinois. Since coming to Brookhaven in 1979 as an assistant nuclear engineer, Horak has served as group leader for the International Projects Division for the then-Department of Nuclear Energy and head of the Energy and Nuclear Technology Division of the Department of Advanced Technology. He had a lead role in the Department of Energy's activities in response to the Chernobyl accident, including evaluations of Soviet-designed facilities. He has implemented and managed numerous programs in nuclear safety, international safeguards, and energy-system development. In his current position, Horak initiated new research programs on materials for extreme environments, hydrogen storage, and advanced battery design.