URECA Researcher of the Month: A Passion for Physics and Discovery

Stone Chou - the URECA researcher of the month for September - is a senior majoring in physics and mathematics who has been doing research since January 2025 in the Neutrino and Nucleon Decay Group under the mentorship of Assistant Professor Ciro Riccio and SUNY Distinguished Professor and Chair Chang Kee Jung in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Chou's early involvement in research, after only one semester at Stony Brook, can be traced back to his conversations with the instructor for "Special Topics in Physics" in Fall 2024 - Nobel Laureate Barry Barish, President's Distinguished Endowed Chair in Physics at Stony Brook University. Chou is particularly grateful for the opportunity to learn from him and get advice and inspiration to pursue research.

Working on the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, Chou has focused on developing reconstruction algorithms for atmospheric neutrino events in liquid argon time project chambers and recently submitted a first-author paper on "Enhanced Reconstruction of Sub-GeV Neutrino Charged-Current Interactions in LArTPCs" to the Physical Review D.

When asked what advice he would give to fellow students interested in pursuing research, he said, "I think the most important thing is communication. A lot of people are just too afraid to talk to professors and to learn from them, or they don't think they're qualified to do serious research. Most of our professors are not that formidable, and want to teach you and let you contribute to society. So it's very important to talk to professors."

To explore his understanding of theoretical physics, Chou also studied random matrix theory and quantum many body theory with Professor Jacobus Verbaarschot. He also had the opportunity to present to the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory journal club on the Enhanced Reconstruction of Sub-GeV neutrinos.

Chou is a two-time recipient of the department's "Fumi Kato Fellowship," will be serving as a teaching assistant this semester for an Advanced Quantum Mechanics course and will be applying to PhD physics programs.

Read the full interview with URECA Director Karen Kernan.