Background and Research Interests

Barbara Wang Alan began working at LLNL in May 2016 as a postdoc in the Nuclear and Particle Physics Group and is currently an experimental nuclear physicist in the Nuclear and Radiochemistry Group. She received her PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley where she worked on characterizing backgrounds in the neutrinoless double-beta-decay experiment CUORE. At LLNL, her research focuses on improving nuclear data relevant to nuclear astrophysics, nuclear energy, and stockpile stewardship. Her work involves using accelerators and state-of-the-art charged-particle, gamma-ray, and neutron detectors to measure nuclear-reaction cross sections and fission properties via the surrogate method. She has measured beta-delayed-neutron branching ratios using radioactive beams coupled with ion traps and radiation detectors. She also performs data analysis for various projects in support of stockpile-stewardship and nuclear-forensics activities at LLNL.

Ph.D. Nuclear Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 2014

M.S. Nuclear Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 2009

B.S. Physics, University of Georgia, Athens, 2007

• B. S. Wang , S. A. Caldwell, N. D. Scielzo, A. Czeszumska, J. A. Clark, G. Savard, A. Aprahamian, M. T. Burkey, C. J. Chiara, J. Harker, A. F. Levand, S. T. Marley, G. E. Morgan, J. M. Munson, E. B. Norman, A. Nystrom, R. Orford, S. W. Padgett, A. Pérez Galván, K. S. Sharma, K. Siegl, and S. Y. Strauss, “β-delayed neutron studies of 135, 136Sb and 140I performed with trapped ions,” Phys. Rev. C 101, 025806 (2020).
• A. Czeszumska , N. D. Scielzo, S. A. Caldwell, J. A. Clark, G. Savard, B. S. Wang, A. Aprahamian, M. T. Burkey, C. J. Chiara, J. Harker, A. F. Levand, S. T. Marley, G. Morgan, J. M. Munson, E. B. Norman, A. Nystrom, R. Orford, S. W. Padgett, A. Pérez Galván, K. S. Sharma, K. Siegl, and S. Y. Strauss, “β-delayed neutron emission studies of 137, 138I and 144, 145Cs performed with trapped ions,” Phys. Rev. C 101, 024312 (2020).
• B. S. Wang, J. T. Harke, O. A. Akindele, R. J. Casperson, R. O. Hughes, J. D. Koglin, K. Kolos, E. B. Norman, S. Ota, and A. Saastamoinen, “Determining the average prompt-fission-neutron multiplicity for 239Pu(n, f) via a 240Pu(a, a’f) surrogate reaction,” Phys. Rev. C 100, 064609 (2019).
• O. A. Akindele, B. S. Alan, J. T. Burke, R. J. Casperson, R. O.Hughes, J. D. Koglin, K. Kolos, E. B. Norman, S. Ota, and A. Saastamoinen, “Expansion of the Surrogate Method to Measure the Prompt Fission Neutron Multiplicity for 241Pu,” Phys. Rev. C 99, 054601 (2019).
• O. A. Akindele, R. J. Casperson, B. S. Wang, J. T. Burke, R. O. Hughes, S. E. Fisher, A. Saastamoinen, E.B. Norman, “NeutronSTARS: A segmented neutron and charged particle detector for low-energy reaction studies,” Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A 872, 112 (2017).
• B. S. Wang, E. B. Norman, N. D. Scielzo, A. R. Smith, K. J. Thomas, and S. A. Wender, “Cosmogenic-neutron activation of TeO2 and implications for neutrinoless double-β decay experiments,” Phys. Rev. C 92, 024620 (2015).