University Park, Pa. -- Anna Stasto, assistant professor of physics, has been awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in recognition of her work as a young scientist engaged in cutting-edge research. Sloan Research Fellowships are intended to enhance the careers of the very best young faculty members in specified fields of science. Currently, a total of 118 fellowships are awarded annually in seven fields: chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, and physics.
Stasto studies particle physics, focusing, in particular, on the theory of strong interactions and on astroparticle and neutrino physics. She is especially interested in investigating the high-energy limit of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), where new phenomena related to the large densities of quarks and gluons are expected to be observed. In the past, she conducted research related to the so-called deep-inelastic scattering of electrons on protons, a process that was investigated experimentally at the Hadron Electron Ring Accelerator (HERA) collider in Germany. The results of her theoretical analyses have been applied successfully to a variety of subjects, including structure-function studies of protons; the production of heavy quarks; and the production of jets of particles. She also has studied the production of neutrinos, particles with no mass or charge, and has investigated the propagation of neutrinos through the Earth.
In the near future, Stasto plans to focus her research program on theoretical descriptions of the processes that will take place at the Large Hadron Collider, a new particle accelerator located on the border between France and Switzerland.
Prior to joining Penn State as an assistant professor in 2008, Stasto was a research associate at Penn State from 2006 to 2008. She was a research associate at Brookhaven National Laboratory from 2004 to 2006, and she was a postdoctoral fellow at the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, Germany. Stasto earned a master's degree in physics at the Jagiellonian University in Poland in 1996 and a joint doctoral degree in theoretical physics at the Polish Academy of Science and the Universtiy of Durham in the United Kingdom in 1999. She received a habilitation degree in theoretical physics from the Polish Academy of Science in 2005.