Science Track: Sofia Karampagia, Grand Valley State University, Physics: “From Nuclei to Stars”

It has been a little over a hundred years that the existence of the nucleus was proposed and nuclear physics was born. The properties and the structure of the nuclei have been investigated actively ever since. Through this study nuclear physicists have tried to shed light on how nuclei interact with each other and with particles and how different nuclei are formed through this interaction. The genesis of all nuclei, though, comes from space. We will try to understand how space and matter were created by discussing the mechanisms of creation and transmutation of elements. These mechanisms are those that connect the invisible nucleus to the stars and nuclear physics to the production of elements in the universe.