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DOE Physicists at Work
Profiles of representative DOE-sponsored physicists
doing
research at universities and national laboratories
Compiled by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information
Winston Roberts
What holds a nucleus together? That question, asked by his high school chemistry teacher,
inspired a young Winston Roberts to an eventual career in physics as a full
professor at Old Dominion University and a member of the Theory
Group at the
Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Laboratory (JLab).
"My late high school chemistry teacher, E. Norman Lambert, is the one who
got me interested in this kind of question," said Dr. Roberts, who was born
in Port of Spain on the island of Trinidad. While attending high school at
the Queen's Royal College, one of the island's most renowned high schools, Dr.
Roberts decided to major in physics for his undergraduate studies, which were
pursued at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada. This was made
possible through a scholarship from the government of Trinidad and Tobago.
"The scholarship was a wonderful opportunity, as I would never have been
able to afford this," said Dr. Roberts.
In his graduating year at Dalhousie, Dr. Roberts received the
University Medal for finishing atop the physics graduating class, along with the
Governor General's Gold Medal. He then went to Guelph, Ontario, about 90
minutes from Toronto, for his Ph. D. His first year at Guelph was spent at
Oxford University. Dr. Roberts completed his Ph. D. in 1988 with Dr.
Gabriel Karl, then spent
one year as a research associate in Grenoble, France, followed by about 18
months at Harvard University. "By this time, I was a permanent
resident of Canada, and had received an NSERC Fellowship that would allow me to
conduct research anywhere in the world," said Dr. Roberts. Since his
appointment at Old Dominion University, he has also been awarded a
"National Young Investigator" award by the National Science
Foundation. "That award allowed me a lot of independence, as I could
design my research program as I thought appropriate," said Dr. Roberts.
Dr. Roberts' research focuses on what is known as "hadronic
physics" and, not surprisingly, is related to the heart of that question
asked so many years ago in Trinidad - the nucleus.
"Basically, I'm trying to understand the way in which
quarks make up the proton and neutron, and all of their relatives, and how these
particles behave," said Dr. Roberts. "Some of my projects are
directly related to the mission of JLab and the DOE, such as calculations for
processes that will be measured there. DOE's Office of Nuclear Physics
provides support for "the community of scientists who seek to understand
the fundamental forces and particles of nature as manifested in nuclear
matter.
"So has the question that brought Dr. Roberts into his field of
research - What holds a nucleus together? - been answered?
"We now have a good idea of what holds the nucleus
together, but there are many details we're still trying to understand. In
my current research, I am looking at things one layer deeper, exploring how the
proton and neutron (the particles that make up all the matter that most of us
ever 'see') are made out of quarks," said Dr. Roberts.
Dr. Roberts currently receives funding from the DOE through his
position at JLab, and he understands funding questions from the point of view of
the funding agencies as well. He has served as a program officer at the
National Science Foundation and is currently on leave in the Office of Nuclear
Physics at the Department of Energy, helping to make funding decisions in
nuclear theory.
In addition to his scientific and administrative endeavors, Dr.
Roberts is an avid woodworker, with a preference for working with exotic
woods. Some of his creations can be seen on his website at www.knottyprofessor.com.
Dr. Roberts' home page
Dr. Roberts articles accessed via OSTI:
Information Bridge
A
Model for Two-Pion Photoproduction AmplitudesHeavy
Quark
Effective Theory
Energy
Citations Database
Color-Singlet
Quark-Pair Transmutation: Helicity Amplitudes and Partial-Wave Analysis
String-Breaking
Model for 
Production
Baryon-Antibaryon
Decays of Four-Quark States
Can
Four-Quark States Be Easily Detected in Baryon-Antibaryon Scattering?
Simple
Tests of the Factorization Assumption
Heavy
Quark Symmetries and the Decays B 
Baryon+Antibaryon
decays of baryons in a relativized model
Heavy
mass expansion in 
decaysQuasi-two-body
decays of nonstrange baryons
Relativistic
Chiral Quark Model for Pseudoscalar Emission From Heavy Mesons
r
polarization and model independent extraction of |Vub|/|Vcd| from D 
and B
E-print Network
A Phenomenological
Lagrangian Approach to Two Kaon Photoproduction and Pentaquark Searches
Polarization
Observables in 
Polarization
Observables for Two-Pion Production off the Nucleon
A Vision for Nuclear Theory: Report to NSAC
Radiative Transitions in Heavy Mesons in a Relativistic Quark Model
Quark Models of Baryon Masses and Decays
Phenomenological Study of Strong Decays of Heavy Hadrons in Heavy Quark Effective Theory
Evidence for the Fourth P11 Resonance Predicted by the Constituent Quark Model
A Relativistic Chiral Quark Model for Pseudoscalar Emission From Heavy Mesons
Strange Decays of Nonstrange Baryons
Strong Decays of Heavy Hadrons In HQET
A Model For Two-Pion Photoproduction Amplitudes
Meson Decays In A Quark Model
New Baryons in the  and  Channels
HQET and Form Factor Effects in
Application of HQET to
 Transitions
Heavy Mesons In A Relativistic Model
Soft Pion Emission in Semileptonic B-Meson Decays
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