Triveni Rao is an Indian and American physicist and an expert on physics instrumentation. She is a senior physicist at the

Brookhaven National Laboratory Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratories, United States Department of Energy national laboratory located in Upton, New York, a hamlet of the Brookhaven, New York, Town of Brookhaven. It w ...

, acting head of the Instrumentation Facilities Division at the laboratory, and an adjunct professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at

Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public university, public research university in Stony Brook, New York, United States, on Long Island. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is on ...

Education and career

Originally from India, Rao completed a Ph.D. in physics at the

University of Illinois Chicago The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a public research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus established under the Universi ...

in 1983, after also earning a master's degree there. After working in industry for a year, she joined the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1985. Formerly the head of the Laser Applications Group at Brookhaven, she subsequently became associate division head of the Instrumentation Division, and then acting head of the Instrumentation Facilities Division. In 2023 she was funded by the Indian government by a Visiting Advance Joint Research Faculty Fellowship, for a visiting position at the Inter-University Accelerator Centre in Delhi.

Research

Rao's expertise involves instrumentation for high-energy physics, including

photocathode A photocathode is a surface engineered to convert light (photons) into electrons using the photoelectric effect. Photocathodes are important in accelerator physics where they are utilised in a photoinjector to generate high brightness electron ...

s and

photoinjector A photoinjector is a type of source for intense electron beams which relies on the photoelectric effect. A laser pulse incident onto the cathode of a photoinjector drives electrons out of it, and into the accelerating field of the electron gun. In ...

s, devices for turning

laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word ''laser'' originated as an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radi ...

pulses into high-intensity

electron beam Since the mid-20th century, electron-beam technology has provided the basis for a variety of novel and specialized applications in semiconductor manufacturing, microelectromechanical systems, nanoelectromechanical systems, and microscopy. Mechani ...

s, as well as high-energy superconducting radiofrequency sources. With David H. Dowell, Rao is the editor of the book ''An Engineering Guide To Photoinjectors'', published as an

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

work on

arXiv.org arXiv (pronounced as "archive"—the X represents the Greek letter chi ⟨χ⟩) is an open-access repository of electronic preprints and postprints (known as e-prints) approved for posting after moderation, but not peer reviewed. It con ...

Recognition

Rao was named as a

Fellow of the American Physical Society The American Physical Society honors members with the designation ''Fellow'' for having made significant accomplishments to the field of physics. The following lists are divided chronologically by the year of designation. * List of fellows of the ...

, in the 2008 class of fellows, "for pioneering work on metal photo cathodes for high brightness RF injectors". In 2012, Rao was honored as a distinguished Asian American professional at the Stony Brook University Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Celebration.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rao, Triveni Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Indian physicists Indian women physicists American physicists American women physicists University of Illinois Chicago alumni Brookhaven National Laboratory staff Fellows of the American Physical Society