Dr. Umesh Garg, Professor of Physics at the University of Notre Dame, graduated from Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani, and obtained a PhD in experimental nuclear physics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. After postdoctoral work at the Cyclotron Institute, Texas A & M University, he joined the Notre Dame faculty in 1982.
Dr. Garg’s area of expertise is experimental nuclear physics. His current research interests include experimental investigation of compressional-mode giant resonances and exotic quantal rotation in nuclei. Some of his major accomplishments include the discovery of the isoscalar giant dipole resonance, an exotic mode of nuclear vibration, and elucidation of its properties; experimental determination of the nuclear incompressibility and the asymmetry term; first observation of longitudinal wobbling in nuclei; first observation of tidal waves in nuclei; first observation of a composite pair of chiral rotational bands, and affirmation of chirality in odd-A nuclei; and, first observation of multiple chiral bands (MχD) in nuclei. His research efforts have been truly international, involving collaborations over the years with scientists in Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, France, Finland, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam.
He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for Advancement of Science. Dr. Garg was a Fulbright Specialist Awardee on Physics Education (2015-2020) and has been a JSPS (Japan) Fellow (2012) and PKU (China) Fellow (2012). He has been a consultant/visiting or adjunct professor at many universities and institutions: Argonne National Laboratory; BARC, Mumbai; GSI, Darmstadt; Peking University: Texas A & M University; TIFR, Mumbai; Xi’an Jiaotong University; and Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam.
Dr. Garg has served on a number of committees and boards, including the APS Committee on Governance, and the Program Committee of the APS Division of Nuclear Physics. He currently serves on the Board of Editors of the journal Progress of Theoretical and Experimental Physics.
The proposed Fulbright-Nehru project aims at enhancing collaborations with Indian scientists on investigations of chirality and wobbling in nuclei. These exotic modes of rotation are unique to triaxial nuclei—ellipsoids with all three axes unequal. Dr. Garg and his associates aims to perform measurements using the Indian National Gamma Array, a unique and truly world-class detector system, to study the band structures associated with chirality and wobbling. He also intends to give a series of lectures across India on these topics, along with some “general purpose” lectures meant to inspire students aspiring to pursue a career in physics.