Department of Physics Chairman Roberto Mancini, long considered one of the country’s leading professors and researchers in the area of high-energy density plasmas and plasma spectroscopy played a key role last week in the 13th International Workshop on Radiative Properties of Hot Dense Matter in Santa Barbara, Calif.

Mancini was one of the chief organizers of the event, held Nov. 10-14, and helped bring together more than 120 scientists and students working at academic and national laboratory institutions in the United States, Europe, Russia, China and Japan.

“This workshop is the prime meeting for discussing atomic and radiation physics of high-density plasmas, which is a research topic very important to our own University,” said Mancini, noting that Nevada has a great deal of faculty talent and research focus pointed in this topic area.

The week-long series of discussions featured the expertise and insight of some of the world’s leading researchers in x-ray radiative transfer, shape lines, dense plasma spectroscopy, atomic kinetics and plasma processes. The workshop attendees gathered to identify current problems in these fields, as well as in finding new directions for future research.

A special session of plasma spectroscopy to celebrate legendary University of Maryland Physics Professor Hans Griem’s 80th birthday was also held. Griem is a fellow of the American Physical Society and former Maxwell Prize winner.

In addition to support from the University’s College of Science, the workshop was co-sponsored by V-Division of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Atomic and Optical Theory Group, Theory Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory; Pulsed Power Science Center of Sandia National Laboratories; and the University of California’s Institute for Material Dynamics at Extreme Conditions.