A Lebanon Valley College physicist has landed a third National Science Foundation grant to continue theoretical nuclear physics research with undergraduates on the Annville campus.
Dr. Daniel Pitonyak, co-chair of physics and chemistry and an associate professor of physics, has been awarded slightly more than $200,000 over three years, the college announced Tuesday, Aug. 4. The money extends his project, “Hadronic Structure from Spin Observables in pQCD,” through July 31, 2029, and builds on NSF grants he received in 2020 and 2023.
The research, based in LVC’s Neidig-Garber Science Center, aims to map a three-dimensional image of the internal structure of visible matter. Pitonyak’s team writes code in Python to compute high-energy particle collisions and analyze how models fit experimental data, work that lets the researchers extract information about quarks and gluons, the elementary particles that make up objects such as the proton.
The grant will pay summer research stipends for students and cover travel to national conferences, according to the college. Students will also work with Pitonyak’s collaborators at other universities and national laboratories.
“I am grateful for the continued support of the National Science Foundation for student-faculty research in theoretical nuclear physics at LVC,” Pitonyak said in a statement. “This grant award is a testament to the sustained, high-quality physics research program we have at The Valley, driven by very talented students who co-author peer-reviewed publications and give presentations at national conferences.”
Physics, mathematics, computer science and data science majors have co-authored or presented research supported by the grants, the college said.
Pitonyak’s first NSF award, announced in 2020, was for $164,862. He is also part of a team of scientists working under a $1.95 million U.S. Department of Energy grant, now entering its final year, that supports the SURGE (SatURated GluE) Topical Theory Collaboration studying the impact of gluons on the structure of the proton.
A 2008 LVC graduate who majored in physics and mathematics, Pitonyak earned his doctorate at Temple University in 2013 and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Penn State Berks, and Old Dominion University before joining the LVC faculty in 2018. He won the college’s Thomas Rhys Vickroy Award for Excellence in Teaching, its top faculty honor, in 2024, and last year was named the recipient of the American Physical Society’s 2026 Prize for a Faculty Member for Research in an Undergraduate Institution.
He has published more than 45 papers in peer-reviewed journals, which have drawn more than 4,000 citations, the college said.
Read More:
- (Sept. 2020) LVC physics professor lands NSF grant
- (Jan. 2023) LVC physicist part of $1.95 million Dept. of Energy grant for gluon research
- (Feb. 2024) Physics program receives largest estate gift in Lebanon Valley College’s history
- (Nov. 2025) LVC physics professor earns national award for research with undergraduates
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