Biographical Sketch:
Helen Caines is the Horace D. Taft Professor of Physics and Director of Graduate Admissions for Physics at Yale University. Her research focuses on understanding the behavior of nuclear matter under extremes of temperature and density.
Prof. Caines received both her undergraduate degree and Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Birmingham. Her thesis was entitled A Study of Strangeness Production in Pb-Pb Collisions at 158 GeV/nucleon. Before joining the faculty at Yale, Prof. Caines was a postdoctoral researcher and associate researcher at Ohio State University.
Research:
Prof. Caines’ research is concentrated on understanding the behavior of nuclear matter under extremes of temperature and density. Theoretical calculations indicate that a Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP), a deconfined state of quarks and gluons, exists when energy densities of more than 6 times nuclear matter are reached. Such extreme conditions can be created in the laboratory when ultra-relativistic heavy ions are collided. Helen is therefore a collaborator on the STAR experiment based at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven Laboratory on Long Island in New York and on the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. The formation of a QGP has been confirmed by the RHIC collaborations. Helen is now focused on measuring the high momentum particles produced in the collisions, and how they interact with the QGP. The results of these studies will teach us more about the properties of this new state of matter.
Education:
Ph.D., University of Birmingham, 1996
Honors & Awards:
Caines is an American Physical Society (APS) Fellow and a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, UK. In January of 2012, she was named APS Committee on the Status of Women in Physics Woman Physicist of the Month. She was also awarded the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Advanced Research Fellowship, UK. Caines was the co-spokesperson of the STAR collaboration from 2017 to 2023.
Selected Publications:
