Professor of Physics, and Affiliated Faculty in the Nuclear Engineering Program at Virginia Tech, with a research focus in experimental particle physics with an emphasis on neutrino interactions and neutrino oscillations.

Center for Neutrino Physics
Department of Physics
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA 24061
(540) 231-5321
Jonathan.Link@vt.edu
  At the Savannah River P Reactor, where the neutrino was
  discovered in 1956. Also the site of the world's most inacces-
  sible historical marker.

Education

B.S. in physics from the University of California, Davis (1993)

M.S. in physics from the University of California, Davis (1996)

Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Davis (2001)

Awards

Virginia Tech Scholar of the Week, June 13-19, 2016

Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, 2016

US DOE Outstanding Junior Investigator Award, 2008

In the News

• Science News: Mounting evidence suggests neutrinos are key to why antimatter is rare (11/25/2019)
• Chemistry World: Russian role in Europe-wide radiation leak two years ago confirmed (9/1/2019)
• Science News: How a 2017 radioactive plume may be tied to Russia and nixed neutrino research (7/29/2019)
• NPR News: Physicists Say They Have Evidence For A New Fundamental Particle (6/5/2018)
• Science News: Mysterious neutrino surplus hints at the existence of new particles (6/1/2018)
• WCVE NPR, Richmond: VA Tech Researchers Develop Tracking Device To Stop Rogue Nations From Making Plutonium Undetected (8/2/2017)
• WDBJ 7 News, Roanoke: Virginia Tech device expected to track nuclear activity by rogue nations (8/2/2017)
• WINA News Radio, Charlottesville: Jonathan Link: Keeping Rogue Nations in Nuclear Check (8/2/2017)
• Symmetry Magazine: Mobile Neutrino Lab makes its debut (2/21/2017)
• Science Magazine: The Sterile Neutrino: Fertile Concept or Dead End? (10/21/2011)
• VT Reaearch Magazine: Everything Under the Sun (W/nter 2008)
• College of Science Magazine: Virginia Tech Scientists Help Clarify the Mystery of Sterile Neutrinos (Fall 2007)
• Inside Virginia Tech: Radio spot that aired during halftime of the Duke-VT football game (October 13, 2007)

Courses Taught

Foundations of Physics (Phys2305 & Phys2306)

Seminar for Physics Majors (Phys2326)

Modern Experimental Physics (Phys4315 & Phys4316)

Nuclear and Particle Physics (Phys4504 & Phys5504)

Advanced Particle Physcics (Phys6725 & Phys6726)

Special Study: Nuclear Physics

Special Study: Particle Physics

Collaborations and Experiments

COHERENT Neutrino Scattering at the Spallation Neutron Source (2018-present)

The CHANDLER Reactor Neutrino Detector, spokesperson (2015-present)

Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment in Daya Bay, China (2006-present)

Braidwood Reactor neutrino experiment at the Braidwood reactor in Illinois, co-founder (2004-2006)

MiniBooNE Short Baseline Neutrino Oscillations to test LSND (2001-2008)

FOCUS Photoproduction of Charmed particles (1995-2001+)

H1 High energy proton electron scattering experiment at DESY (1993-1995)

Professional Organizations and Activities

• Editorial Board for the journal Physics (2021-2023)
• International Organizing Committee for the Heavy Quarks and Laptons Conference Series (2014-present)
• Convener for the Snowmass Neutrino Working Group on Reactor Nuclear Safeguards and Other Applications (2020-2022)
• Executive Officer for the NNSA commissioned Nu Tools study of applications of reactor neutrinos (2019-2021)
• Convener of the Neutrino Sessions for Heavy Quarks and Leptons (2021)
• Review Committee for the COHERENT Collaboration Program Review, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (2018)
• Local Organizing Committee for the The 20^th International Workshop on Neutrinos from Accelerators (2018)
• Convener of the Neutrino Sessions for Heavy Quarks and Leptons (2018)
• Co-chair of the Local Organizing Committee for Heavy Quarks and Leptons (2016)
• Convener of the Neutrino Invited Session for the Meeting of the Southeast Section of the APS (2016)
• Local Organizing Committee for Applied Antineutrino Physics (2015)
• Chair of the APS Mitsuyoshi Tanaka Dissertation Award in Experimental Particle Physics Committee (2014-2016)
• Scientific Organizing Committee and Convener of Sterile Neutrino Working Group for Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program (2014-2015)
• Convener for the Snowmass Neutrino Working Group on Anomalies and New Physics (2012-2013)
• Local Organizing Committee for the International Neutrino Summer School (2012)
• Co-Chair of the Organizing Committe for the Sterile Neutrino at the Crossroads Workshop (2011)
• Local Organizing Committee for the Hadronic Shower Simulation Workshop (2006)
• Local Organizing Committee for the LONU-LENS Workshop (2006)
• International Advisory Committee for the 2^nd Scandinavian Neutrino Workshop (2006)
• Local Organizing Committee for 5^th International Workshop on Neutrino Factories & Superbeams (2003)
• Member of the American Physical Society since 1993

  Division of Particles and Fields

  Division of Nuclear Physics

  Southeast Section

• Member of the American Nuclear Society since 2016

Patents

• "Antineutrino Detector Based on Heterogeneous Scintillation Lattice," P. Huber, J. M. Link and C. Mariani, US Patent No. 10,429,526, awarded October 1, 2019.

Select Papers

• C. Awe et al., "Measurement of proton quenching in a plastic scintillator detector," Journal of Instrumentation 16, P02035 (2021).
• The COHERENT Collaboration (D. Akimov et al.), "First Measurement of Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering on Argon," Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 012002 (2021).
• Jonathan Link, Patrick Huber and Alireza Haghighat, "The Curious History of Neutrinos and Nuclear Reactors," Nuclear News, December 2020 issue, page 58.
• A. Haghighat, P. Huber, S. Li, J. M. Link, C. Mariani, J. Park, and T. Subedi, "Observation of Reactor Antineutrinos with a Rapidly Deployable Surface-Level Detector," Phys. Rev. Applied 13, 034028 (2020).
• Jonathan M. Link, "Scattering Neutrinos Caught in the Act," Science 357, 1098 (2017).
• P. Coloma, P. Huber and J.M. Link, "Combining dark matter detectors and electron-capture sources to hunt for new physics in the neutrino sector," JHEP 1411, 042 (2014).
• The Daya Bay Collaboration (F.P. An et al.), "Observation of Electron Antineutrino Disappearance at Daya Bay," Phys.Rev.Lett. 108, 171803 (2012). (Press Release)
• Sanjib K. Agarwalla, Patrick Huber, Jonathan M. Link and Debabrata Mohapatra, "A new approach to anti-neutrino running in long baseline neutrino oscillation experiments," JHEP 1104, 099 (2011).
• The MiniBooNE Collaboration (A.A. Aguilar-Arevalo, et al.), "First Observation of Coherent π⁰ Production in Neutrino Nucleus Interactions with E_ν < 2 GeV." Phys. Lett. B664, 41-46 (2008).
• The Brookhaven E910 Collaboration (I. Chemakin, et al.), "Pion production by protons on a thin beryllium target at 6.4 GeV/c, 12.3-GeV/c, and 17.5-GeV/c incident proton momenta." Phys. Rev. C 77, 015209 (2008).
• The MiniBooNE Collaboration (A.A. Aguilar-Arevalo, et al.), "A Search for electron neutrino appearance at the Δm² ∼1 eV² scale." Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 231801 (2007). (Press Release)
• C. Grieb, J.M. Link and R.S. Raghavan, "Probing Active to Sterile Neutrino Oscillations in the LENS Detector," Phys. Rev. D 75, 093006 (2007).
• J. M. Conrad, J. M. Link and M. H. Shaevitz, "Precision Measurement of sin² θ_W at a Reactor," Phys. Rev. D 71, 073013 (2005).
• The FOCUS Collaboration (J. M. Link, et al.), "Study of the Decay D⁰ → K⁺ π⁻," Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 2955, 2001
• The H1 Collaboration (S. Aid, et al.), "Elastic Electroproduction of ρ⁰ and J/ψ Mesons at large Q² at HERA," Nucl.Phys.B468:3-36 (1996).
• A Complete List of Particle Physics Papers from inSPIREhep.net