Patrick Huber named William E. Hassinger Jr. Senior Faculty Fellow
Patrick Huber, professor of physics in the College of Science at Virginia Tech, recently received the William E. Hassinger Jr. Senior Faculty Fellowship in Physics from the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.
The fellowship was established in 2007 by its namesake to enhance the national and international prominence of Virginia Tech’s Department of Physics. It supports research programs considered most likely to generate important scientific breakthroughs of a fundamental or applied nature.
Recipients hold the title of William E. Hassinger Jr. Senior Faculty Fellow for a period of three years.
A member of the Virginia Tech faculty since 2008, Huber conducts research on neutrino physics. He has helped build an internationally recognized program in neutrino physics both in basic science and applications to global and national security. He has authored more than 170 publications and has built an impactful research program that has resulted in more than 17,000 citations. He previously held the Roger Moore and Mojdeh Khatam-Moore Faculty Fellowship.
In 2010, Huber co-founded the Center for Neutrino Physics at Virginia Tech. He was a lead developer of the GLoBES software package, which is the standard for computing the physics sensitivity of many large neutrino experiments. In 2011, he performed what is currently the most accurate calculation of the reactor antineutrino spectrum emitted by nuclear reactors in a single-authored publication that has now has more than 1,100 citations.
He has been a member or leader of a large number of study and planning efforts in the neutrino community, including his current service on the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel, setting the research and budget priorities for the field in the United States for the next decade.
Huber’s research has been recognized with substantial external funding. Since coming to Virginia Tech, he has obtained more than $2.8 million in federal funding. He is the recipient of multiple awards, including the Fermilab Distinguished Scholar in 2016, the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2016, Early Career Research Award of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of High Energy Physics in 2010, and election as a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2019.
At Virginia Tech, he served as chair of the Department of Physics from 2015-16, and from 2016-17, he served as inaugural director of the Integrated Security Education and Research Center. Since 2018, he has served as director of the Center for Neutrino Physics at Virginia Tech
He earned a master’s degree and Ph.D. from Technical University in Munich, Germany.
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