Bio
Dr Lesher received her PhD from the University of Kentucky in Experimental Nuclear Physics followed by Postdoctoral Fellowship positions at the Instituut voor Kern-en Str Stralingsfysica, University of Leuven, Belgium, the University of Richmond, and N-Division at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. In 2009 she joined the Physics Department at University of Wisconsin - La Crosse (UWL) where for three years she also served as Chair of the Department. While at UWL Dr. Lesher was also the McNair Scholars Program Director from 2021 - 2024. Other professional appointments include Guest Professor in the Physics Department at the University of Notre Dame (since 2010) and a Presidential Visiting Fellow at Yale University (2019-2020). In 2020 she was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
In Jul 2024, Dr. Lesher joined the Department of Physics at North Carolina A&T State University as Chair.
Research Interests
Dr Lesher's research involves studying the vibration of nuclei using a combination of accelerated beams and detector arrays at research laboratories around the world. To further these goals, our group is collaborating with the University of Notre Dame Institute for Structure and Nuclear Astrophysics (ISNAP), to build our own detector array, called fIREBAll. This detector will measure conversion electrons in coincidence with gamma rays at ISNAP on nuclide we have interest in studying.
All of her research involves undergraduate students including in the development of detectors and software needed to operate the array. Most other projects involve data analysis. Some undergraduate students are involved in My Nuclear Life, a podcast which explores the ways nuclear science and society intersect.
Current work is supported by two National Science Foundation Grants, Nos. PHY-1919364 and PHY-2011267.
