Professor
Department of Physics and Astronomy
C104 Physics Building
Stony Brook, NY 11794-3800
Phone: 631-632-8114
axel.drees@stonybrook.edu
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Biography |
Dr. Axel Drees received his Doctorate from Heidelberg University in 1989 for pioneering work on experiments seeking to create the quark gluon plasma; research that was carried out with the HELIOS collaboration at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS). Afterwards Drees continued his research with the CERES experiment at the SPS, initially as post doc and later as Assistant Professor at Heidelberg. With CERES he discovered the “dilepton enhancement”, which results from medium modifications of meson properties in hot and dense nuclear matter. To date the corresponding publication is the highest cited experimental heavy ion paper from the SPS era. Drees joined the faculty of the Department of Physics & Astronomy at Stony Brook in January 1998. Since then he is a member of the PHENIX collaboration and works with a group of graduate students and post docs. He and his team had a leading role in the analysis of early PHENIX data that discovered jet quenching. He was one of two primary authors of the corresponding paper, which is the most cite experimental paper in the field, excluding review articles. Today he and his team continue research with PHENIX, in particular studying thermal radiation emitted by the QGP. Drees contributed significant service to PHENIX, most prominently he currently serves as deputy spokesperson of PHENIX. In the future Drees plans to actively participate in the new sPHENIX experiment, which will start data taking at BNL in 2022. At Stony Brook Drees currently serves as Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy and in his 20+ years at Stony Brook he also served as Vice Provost, Acting Dean and Associate Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences.