LVC Physics Professor Awarded Third NSF Grant to Build on Student-Faculty Research

Dr. Pitonyak’s NSF grants surpass $500,000 in support for the College’s historic student-faculty research program in the sciences.  

Key Points

• Continued support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) extends Dr. Daniel Pitonyak’s student-faculty research work for another three years.   
• Third NSF grant will enable LVC students to continue to co-author research published in  top peer-reviewed journals and present at national conferences.  
• Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, and Data Science majors have co-authored and/or presented research supported by Dr. Pitonyak’s NSF grants. 

The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that it has awarded a third three-year grant to Dr. Daniel Pitonyak, Co-Chair of Physics and Chemistry and Associate Professor of Physics. The  NSF grant of slightly over $200,000 will continue to support his ongoing student-faculty research on theoretical nuclear physics in the College’s Neidig-Garber Science Center. This award builds on Dr. Pitonyak’s 2020 and 2023 NSF grants. 

The NSF grant will provide additional funding for Dr. Pitonyak’s project, Hadronic Structure from Spin Observables in pQCD, through July 31, 2029. This research aims to map out a 3-dimensional image of the internal structure of visible matter. Dr. Pitonyak’s team writes code in Python to compute high-energy particle collisions and analyze how models fit experimental data. This enables them to extract information on elementary particles, quarks and gluons, that make up objects like the proton. The grant will support LVC students through summer research stipends and fund travel to national conferences. In addition, students will be able to work closely with Dr. Pitonyak’s collaborators at other universities and national labs.  

“I am grateful for the continued support of the National Science Foundation for student-faculty research in theoretical nuclear physics at LVC,” said Dr. Pitonyak. “This grant award is a testament to the sustained, high-quality physics research program we have at The Valley, driven by very talented students who co-author peer-reviewed publications and give presentations at national conferences. I look forward to continuing to provide these high-impact experiences for our students that help set them apart for the next step in their careers.” 

Dr. Pitonyak is also part of a team of scientists awarded a $1.95 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. The  grant, now entering its final year, supports a group of researchers from universities and national labs who are part of the SURGE (SatURatedGluE) Topical Theory Collaboration that is studying the impact of gluons on the structure of the proton. 

About Dr. Pitonyak  

Dr. Pitonyak graduated from Lebanon Valley College with a double major in Physics and Mathematics before earning his Ph.D. at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pa in 2013. His dissertation, “Exploring the Structure of Hadrons through Spin Asymmetries in Hard Scattering Processes,” received the 2015 Dissertation Award from the Group on Hadronic Physics of the American Physical Society. He then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the RIKEN BNL Research Center at Brookhaven National Lab in Upton, N.Y., Penn State University Berks in Reading, Pa., and Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. In 2024, he was selected for LVC’s Thomas Rhys Vickroy Award for Excellence in Teaching, the College’s top honor for full-time faculty. He also received the 2026 American Physical Society Prize for a Faculty Member for Research in an Undergraduate Institution for his significant contributions to physics and the professional development of undergraduate physics students 

Dr. Pitonyak has over 45 research publications in top peer-reviewed journals, including Physical Review Letters, the Journal of High-Energy Physics, Physical Review D, and Physics Letters B, which have accumulated over 4,000 citations. In the past three years, Dr. Pitonyak has presented talks (invited, prize, and plenary) in Denver, Colo.; Anaheim, Calif; Seattle Wash.; Paphos, Cyprus; Pavia, Italy; and Orsay, France. His academic expertise includes atomic and nuclear physics, elementary particle physics, analytical mechanics, electricity and magnetism, computational physics, and quantum mechanics.