Mark Strikman, professor of physics at Penn State University, has been selected to receive the title of distinguished professor of physics. Strikman was honored with the title in recognition of his exceptional record of teaching, research, and service to the University community. The honor is designated by the Office of the President of Penn State based on the recommendations of colleagues and the dean.
Strikman is a theoretical physicist whose research focuses on high-energy collisions of electrons and protons with protons and atomic nuclei. He developed new techniques for probing the microscopic structure of nucleons and nuclei using high-energy beams, and he predicted a variety of important new phenomena that emerge at the interface between particle physics and nuclear physics. Many of these predictions now have been confirmed experimentally at high-energy accelerators around the world. He has organized dozens of international workshops in the United States and in Europe, presented invited talks and lectures at scientific symposia across the globe, and published numerous high-impact scientific papers.
Strikman has received many awards throughout his career. In 2013, he was selected as a CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) Fellow. In 2009, he became one of only a few researchers to have received a second Humboldt Research Award for Senior Scientists from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn, Germany, after having received his first a Humboldt Research Award in 1999 in recognition of his research achievements in investigating the interactions of high-energy particles with atomic nuclei and the hadron class of subatomic particles. In 1997, Strikman was elected to fellowship in the American Physical Society.
Before joining the Eberly College of Science faculty at Penn State in 1992, Strikman was a visiting professor at Penn State, a member of the research staff at the Leningrad Institute of Nuclear Physics, and a visiting professor at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). He received a professor habilitatus degree and a doctoral degree in 1988 and 1978, respectively, from the Leningrad Institute of Nuclear Physics, and a master's degree in 1972 from Leningrad University.