ORNL physicist Leah Broussard earns DOE Distinguished Mentor Award

Dr. Broussard's mentorship had a direct and lasting effect on the development of the nuclear physics and STEM workforce in the United States. It helped set a new standard for mentorship quality and results across the organization and program.

Career path in nuclear physics

Broussard triple-majored in computer science, math and physics at Tulane University before earning her doctorate in physics from Duke University and completing a Seaborg Postdoctoral Fellowship at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

She joined ORNL in 2016 as a Wigner Fellow and received the DOE Early Career Award in Nuclear Physics in 2019.

Broussard's work involves building substantial instrumentation, is highly collaborative and results in publications in prestigious journals. Her collaborators on the Nab experiment, a flagship experiment at SNS for the nation's Fundamental Symmetries program, elected her as co-spokesperson in 2024. The Nab experiment will measure neutron beta decay correlations with unprecedented precision to test predictions of the Standard Model of Particle Physics.

Student contributions to major physics experiments

Broussard's SULI interns and SCGSR fellows have presented their research at national physics conferences in posters and talks. Several are first authors on publications in respected journals.

For Nab, Broussard's students contributed computational and analytical techniques and gained knowledge about detector physics, neutron transport and statistical methods.

For a search for a dark matter candidate, her students participated in simulation, data collection and analysis of an experiment at SNS and HFIR, ruling out an exotic theory that hypothesized an explanation to the neutron lifetime puzzle.

"Dr. Broussard's mentorship had a direct and lasting effect on the development of the nuclear physics and STEM workforce in the United States," Physics Division Director Marcel Demarteau wrote to the nominations committee. "It helped set a new standard for mentorship quality and results across the organization and program."

Testimonials of phenomenal mentorship

Letters from SULI- and SCGSR-supported young scientists to the nominating committee pointed out how Broussard supported both their human and career needs.

"Leah was a phenomenal mentor for me, and without her guidance over both an SCGSR fellowship and postdoc, I would not be where I am today," according to David Mathews, who earned his doctorate from the University of Kentucky. "She helped me feel welcomed and at home at ORNL when I moved away from my home state and institute as a second-year graduate student. I always felt comfortable going to her for help/guidance, and she effectively became my second Ph.D. advisor, even volunteering to serve on my committee. She guided me through well-scoped research projects resulting in multiple papers and conference presentations, ultimately resulting in obtaining a staff scientist position at ORNL that I could not have achieved without her."

August Mendelsohn, a doctoral candidate at the University of Manitoba, wrote, "She has shown me the importance of diplomacy, working collaboratively and coordination, but also more difficult lessons like dealing with burn-out, overextending myself and time management."

Austin Nelsen, who earned his doctorate from the University of Kentucky, wrote, "Leah demonstrated an intuition and value for the learning process unrivaled by her peers, so much so that I owe my self-assurance as a physicist to her mentoring. Where young scientists grapple with overwhelming expectations, she stands as a reminder for why we do what we do in the first place: because we are passionate. She reminds all of us that we must have fun while pursuing our love of physics!"

Sepehr Samiei, a graduate student at Indiana University, wrote, "Her guidance connected me not just to a project, but to an entire research community in which I could grow and thrive."

Marie Blatnik was Broussard's mentee as an undergraduate at LANL and as a graduate student at ORNL, beginning three months after Blatnik gave birth to her daughter. "Her mentoring was tailored and thoughtful, rooted in a deep understanding of my strengths and aspirations. She was more focused on my forward trajectory instead of my faltering as a new mother, while allowing me the leeway to figure out how to balance my new extracurricular responsibility with my desire to make progress on our project," Blatnik said. "I credit her mentorship as a key reason I was able to regain my footing in my career, finish my Ph.D. and begin my postdoctoral position as a Seaborg scholar at Los Alamos National Laboratory."

Great mentorship doesn't just happen; it takes intentional effort. To strengthen her mentoring practices, Broussard leveraged resources from the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research and the American Physical Society's National Mentoring Community.

A virtual award ceremony is planned to celebrate DOE's marvelous mentors. It will include a panel of mentors and mentees sharing experiences and best practices.

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE's Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science. - Dawn Levy