Dr. Homer A. Neal

Dr. Homer A. Neal is Director of the University of Michigan ATLAS Project, the Samuel A. Goudsmit Professor of Physics, Interim President Emeritus, and Vice President Emeritus for Research at the University of Michigan. He received his Bachelors Degree in Physics from Indiana University in 1961 and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1967. From 1987 to 1993 he was Chair of the University of Michigan Physics Department. Before returning to Michigan, he served as Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (1981-86) and Dean for Research and Graduate Development at Indiana University (1976-81).

Dr. Neal's research area is experimental high energy physics and he is currently conducting his research at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, where his research group is part of the ATLAS Experiment. Neal is also a member of the DZERO collaboration at Fermilab that in 1995 announced the discovery of the top quark. Within the DZERO collaboration, he and his group had particular responsibility for designing, implementing, and analyzing data from the Intercryostat Detector which was built by his team at the University of Michigan. His technical research expertise includes the design of particle detectors, the development of image pattern recognition algorithms, particle event reconstruction and analysis, large scale database management and particle physics phenomenology. He has led many experiments that have elucidated the nature of spin effects in high energy particle interactions, including proton-proton elastic scattering, electron-positron scattering and in various inclusive hadronic reactions.

He has served as a Regent of the Smithsonian Institution, as a member of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Advisory Board, as a member of the MIT Visiting Committee on Sponsored Research, on the Board of Trustees of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Center for the Study of the Presidency. He has served on the Board of Trustees of the Argonne National Laboratory and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. As a member of the National Science Board, the oversight body of the National Science Foundation, he chaired the committee that produced in 1986 the Board's first comprehensive report on undergraduate science, mathematics and engineering education. He has also served as Chairman of the Physics Advisory Committee of the National Science Foundation. He has delivered testimony on numerous occasions to Congress, on matters ranging from the funding of National Laboratories to the state of undergraduate science education. Most recently, he delivered testimony to the House Science Committee on International Science, as part of its preparations for the report, “Unlocking our Future: Toward a New National Science Policy”.

As Vice President for Research, Dr. Neal oversaw the research programs, policies and infrastructure at the University of Michigan, which has been often ranked, in terms of total separately budgeted Research and Development expenditures, as the nation's top research university.

He has had extended scientist-in-residence appointments at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva. He has been a visiting scientist at Stanford University, Argonne National Laboratory, and Brookhaven National Laboratory. His professional travels have also taken him to the Institute for High Energy Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and to laboratories in the former Soviet Union, Israel, Japan and several other countries.

He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Ford Motor Company and of Ford Global Technologies. He is a member of the Smithsonian Council of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

He is a recipient of the Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the Stony Brook Medal, and the Indiana University Distinguished Alumni Service Award. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He is married to Donna J. Daniels Neal and they have two adult children, Sharon-Denise Brangman and Homer A. Neal, Jr.