Dhanush Hangal's background is in the field of experimental high-energy nuclear and particle physics. He is a member of the ATLAS Collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, where his research is focused on relativistic heavy-ion collisions. As the sub-convener of the Heavy-Ion Jet group in ATLAS, he is currently overseeing R&D efforts and physics analyses related to jets in heavy-ion collisions. More recently, he joined the sPHENIX Collaboration, which will perform measurements at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the near future. Dhanush's research interests involve understanding the properties of QCD matter under extreme temperatures and densities, called quark-gluon plasma, created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Using data collected at the Large Hadron Collider, Dhanush has studied mechanisms of how highly energetic quarks and gluons, produced at early times of a heavy-ion collision interact with the hot QCD medium and lose energy. More recently, he has led measurements of a new class of jet observables which has provided insight on the microscopic structure of the quark-gluon plasma.

Additionally, Dhanush works on the development and deployment of radionuclide detection and identification algorithms using gamma-ray spectral analysis in projects involving roadside monitoring and wide-area distributed sensor networks. He is currently leading a project funded by DNN R&D as a principal investigator to build a radiation detection simulation framework including modular capabilities for source generation, radiation transport and detector modeling.

 

Ph.D., Physics, University of Illinois at Chicago, Illinois

Integrated MSc. and BSc., Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India