Sam earned a B.S. in physics from the University of Puget Sound in 2011. In 2015, he completed a M.S. in physics from California State University, Long Beach working under the guidance of Dr. Jiyeong Gu, studying odd-triplet superconductivity in exchange-spring based Josephson junctions. He has interned at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory simulating the response of the BRAN monitor at the LHC, and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory analyzing data from the 2009 Jupiter Impact Event.

In 2021, he completed his PhD at Duke University, working under the guidance of Dr. Phil Barbeau, focusing primarily on the COHERENT experiment. At Duke, he studied experimental low energy neutrino and nuclear physics. He worked on the design of the COHERENT NaIvE and ton-scale NaIvETe detectors, assisted in the resurrection of the Multiplicity and Recoil Spectrometer (MARS) at Sandia National Laboratory, analyzed data from COHERENT’s NaIvE and Neutrino-Induced Neutron detectors, and contributed to multiple measurements of low energy nuclear recoil quenching factors at the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory.

He is interested in neutrino and nuclear physics, detector technology, and calculations of nuclear properties.

Ph.D. Physics, Duke University, 2021

M.S. Physics, California State University Long Beach, 2015

B.S. Physics, University of Puget Sound, 2011

• C. Awe, et al., “Measurement of Proton Quenching in a Plastic Scintillator Detector”, JINST 16 P023035 (2021)
• D. Akimov, et al., “First Detection of Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering on Argon”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 012002 (2021)
• B. G. Lenardo, et al., “Low-Energy Physics Reach of Xenon Detectors for Nuclear-Recoil-Based Dark Matter and Neutrino Experiments”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 231106 (2019)
• C. Awe, et al., “Liquid Scintillator Response To Proton Recoils In the 10-100 keV Range”, Phys. Rev. C 98, 045802 (2018)
• D. Akimov, et al., “Observation of Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering”, Science 357 (2017)

• Goshaw Family Fellowship, 2015-2016, 2020
• CNEC Graduate Research Fellowship, 2016-2020
• Graduate Dean’s List CSULB, 2015

github.com/schedges

twitter.com/samhedges