STARKVILLE, Miss.— Mississippi State Professor Benjamin Crider has been selected as a 2026 Experimental Physics Investigator by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
With an award valued at $1.35 million, Crider is one of only 21 inducted into this year’s select cohort recognized for innovative work advancing the study of physics.
Established in 2000 by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore and his wife, Betty, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation advances scientific discovery, environmental conservation and the special character of the San Francisco Bay Area. Through its Experimental Physics Investigators initiative, the foundation provides flexible support to mid-career researchers, investing in scientists and their research programs––rather than a single project––allowing freedom to pursue new ideas that could advance fundamental scientific understanding.
Crider’s research focuses on some of the most neutron-rich atomic nuclei known to exist. He is working to better understand what happens when unstable nuclei decay and release neutrons, including how many neutrons are released and how they behave.
With this foundation support, Crider will develop a new compact detector designed to track neutron interactions more precisely. The detector will help researchers distinguish between multiple neutrons and a single neutron that interacts with the detector more than once, providing a clearer picture of neutron emission and the behavior of these unusual nuclei.
“I’m incredibly honored to receive this award,” Crider said. “The ideas behind this project bring together several areas of research I’ve been working toward throughout my career, from neutron detection and nuclear decay to the development of new detector technologies. The Moore Foundation’s support gives us the freedom to bring those ideas together and try something genuinely new. If we succeed, we’ll have a new way to understand how some of the most exotic nuclei in nature decay.”
If successful, Crider’s approach could give scientists a clearer way to measure neutrons produced in nuclear decay, helping them test nuclear models and better understand how heavy elements are formed. The compact detector also could make it easier to study short-lived, rare isotopes that are difficult to produce and observe.
“With nearly 100 investigators now at work, we are seeing the range of bold, original science we hoped this initiative would make possible,” said Theodore Hodapp, the initiative’s program director. “From the start, our aim has been to accelerate progress at the frontier of experimental physics by giving brilliant mid-career scientists the kind of flexible, sustained support that federal grants rarely can. That freedom lets them take on risky, high-reward experiments and follow ideas when research results lead them down new pathways.”
Also participating in Crider’s research project are MSU faculty member Ron Unz, a health physicist and project manager at MSU’s Institute for Clean Energy Technology, and Julie Butler, an assistant professor of physics at the University of Mount Union. Unz will assist with the detector development and instrumentation aspect at MSU, while Butler will provide support for machine learning approaches to help the team understand detector signals.
Crider joined MSU’s Department of Physics and Astronomy after earning a 2014 doctorate in physics from the University of Kentucky. He earned his master’s degree in physics from Kentucky in 2009 and bachelor’s degrees in physics and mathematics from the University of Richmond in 2006.
For more details about MSU’s College of Arts and Sciences or the Department of Physics and Astronomy, visit www.cas.msstate.edu or www.physics.msstate.edu .
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