Research is centered around utilizing the newly available ability to produce beams of nuclei removed from the valley of stability to investigate nuclear reaction mechanisms. The experiments study the collisional dynamics of heavy-ion reactions and the thermodynamics of the resultant hot nuclear system.

Emission of fragments prior to equilibrium allows us to learn about cluster formation by studying the dynamics involved in the collision of two composite groups of nucleons. Projectile fragmentation reactions allow determination of the final state of the excited nuclear system thus enabling a reconstruction of the thermodynamics of fragmentation.

Much of our work is conducted at the Cyclotron Institute using the K500 superconducting cyclotron. Beams of radioactive ions can currently be separated in the recoil spectrometer, MARS. Complementary experiments with stable beams are also performed utilizing a 4-pi neutron detector for event characterization and selection.