Axel Drees

Research Group Website | Curriculum Vitae. (Last updated: 2023 Jul 31)

Biography:

Axel Drees received his doctorate from Heidelberg University in 1989 for pioneering work on experiments aimed at creating the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), a state of hot, dense nuclear matter in which protons and neutrons melt into their constituent quarks and gluons. The QGP is believed to have been the dominant form of matter during the first (10^-6) seconds after the Big Bang. Drees continued his work as a postdoctoral fellow and later as an Assistant Professor at Heidelberg before joining the faculty at Stony Brook University in January 1998.

At Stony Brook, Drees and his group played a leading role in the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. His work helped establish that the quark-gluon plasma can be created in the laboratory. Currently, Drees and his group focus on characterizing the properties of the QGP using the state-of-the-art sPHENIX experiment, which collected data until the shutdown of RHIC in the spring of 2026.

Drees has held numerous leadership roles within the PHENIX Collaboration and currently serves as its Deputy Spokesperson. Since joining Stony Brook University, his research program has been supported by more than $25 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Over the course of his career, he has authored or co-authored more than 300 peer-reviewed publications that have been cited over 40,000 times, resulting in an h-index exceeding 100.

In addition to his research accomplishments, Drees has held a number of senior leadership positions at Stony Brook University. He served as Associate Dean for Budget and Operations in the College of Arts and Sciences from September 2008 to April 2012 and as Acting Dean during the summer of 2011. He then served as Vice Provost for Budget and Strategic Planning from April 2012 to May 2015, followed by eight years as Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy from September 2015 to August 2023. From August 2023 through July 2024, he served as Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

His current research focuses on heavy-flavor production, electromagnetic probes, jets, and the properties of the quark-gluon plasma in high-energy nuclear collisions using data from the sPHENIX experiment at RHIC.