Samuel Hedges earned a B.S. in physics from the University of Puget Sound in 2011. In 2015, he completed a M.S. in physics from California State University, Long Beach working under the guidance of Dr. Jiyeong Gu, studying odd-triplet superconductivity in exchange-spring based Josephson junctions. He has interned at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory simulating the response of the BRAN luminosity monitor at the LHC, and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory analyzing data from the 2009 Jupiter Impact Event.
He recently completed his PhD at Duke University, working under the guidance of Dr. Phil Barbeau, focusing primarily on the COHERENT experiment. He worked on the design of the COHERENT NaIvE-185 and ton-scale NaIvETe detectors, assisted in the resurrection of the Multiplicity and Recoil Spectrometer (MARS) at Sandia National Laboratory, analyzed data from COHERENT’s NaIvE and Neutrino-Induced Neutron detectors, and contributed to multiple measurements of low energy nuclear recoil quenching factors at the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory.
He is interested in the overlap of neutrino and nuclear physics, the prospect of using neutrino-nucleus interactions to study low-energy neutrino sources, and the development of new detection technologies to further our understanding of the universe.