Angela Biselli

Biography

Professor Angela Biselli received her Laurea in Physics from Università degli Studi di Genova and went on to receive both her M.S. and Ph.D. in Experimental Particle Physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2000 and 2002, respectively. She served as a postdoctoral research associate in the Medium Energy Group at Carnegie Mellon University from 2002 to 2005 and, in 2005, joined the faculty at Fairfield University as an Assistant Professor of Physics. She was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor in 2009 and, subsequently, promoted to full Professor in 2017. Throughout her career, Angela’s research has been, and continues to be, in the field of nuclear and particle physics, with a particular focus on the structure of protons and neutrons. She is the co-author of nearly 200 peer-reviewed publications, and the recipient of over a half million dollars in grant funding, including a prestigious NSF RUI.

Angela’s specific field of research is nuclear and particle physics at intermediate energies. Since her undergraduate degree, she has conducted her research at Jefferson Lab in Newport News, VA, using an electron accelerator (of up to 6 GeV of energy), which allows her to study the structure of nucleons in their bound states. In particular, the focus of her research has been the study of Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs) of the proton. GPDs contain information on quark spatial and momentum distributions, and provide a bridge between the form factors and the parton distributions’ descriptions.

Angela’s service to the University, Sigma Pi Sigma, and profession is extensive. At the University level, Angela served as the Physics Department Chair in Spring 2011 and from Fall 2012 to Spring 2019, chaired four tenuretrack faculty searches, served on task forces to enhance the mentoring of students in the sciences, contributed to Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (WISTEM) programming activities, taught underprivledged students over multiple summers as a part of the NIH-funded Broadening Access to Science Education (BASE) Camp, among many other activities. Furthermore, Angela has served as the University’s official Sigma Pi Sigma chapter director since 2005, and has been co-director with Dr. Robert Cordery since 2018. As a part of her work as the director, Angela has brought in numerous speakers, organized fun physics-themes events and field trips for students, and coordinated all aspects of the Sigma Pi Sigma induction ceremony. At the professional level, Angela’s service is equally noteworthy; she has been a member of five esteemed committees at Jefferson Laboratory, including an elected position on the User Group Board of Directors from 2016-2018. She is regularly called on to review grant proposals for NSF, serve as an external reviewer for tenure and promotion applications, and to present her work at international conferences. At the interface of her service and teaching, Angela has been active in testing new educational technologies and platforms to advance physics pedagogy, and engage her students in the latest, peer-reviewed active learning strategies.