Paul M. Eugenio

Biography

Paul M. Eugenio received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1998, following B.S. (1992) and M.S. (1994) degrees in Physics from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. After completing his doctorate, he joined the Medium-Energy Particle Physics Group at Carnegie Mellon University as a Research Physicist.

In 2001, Dr. Eugenio joined the faculty of the Department of Physics at Florida State University as an Assistant Professor, was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2007, and to full Professor in 2011. He served as Chair of the Department of Physics from 2019 to 2025, guiding the department through growth in research infrastructure, graduate support, and faculty recruitment across multiple subfields.

Research Interests

Dr. Eugenio’s research lies in experimental hadronic physics with an emphasis on the non-perturbative regime of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). His work focuses on the spectroscopy of light mesons and baryons, including the search for hybrid, exotic, and glueball states whose properties transcend the conventional quark model.

He has contributed to analyses of meson spectra produced in proton–antiproton annihilation and pion–proton interactions, mentoring undergraduate and graduate students in data analysis and detector instrumentation. At the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab), Dr. Eugenio plays a leading role in the GlueX Experiment in Hall D, a major component of the U.S. nuclear-physics program supported by the DOE.

His group designed, developed, and fabricated the GlueX Time-of-Flight (TOF) detector, a key subsystem providing precise timing and particle-identification capability that has operated successfully throughout GlueX data-taking. His contributions also include Monte Carlo event-generation frameworks, detector simulations, and data-analysis pipelines to model photon-induced reactions, study polarization observables, and perform amplitude analyses aimed at revealing gluonic degrees of freedom in QCD.

Professional Memberships & Service

• American Physical Society (APS)
• American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
• Sigma Xi – The Scientific Research Society
• Sigma Pi Sigma – The National Physics Honor Society

Dr. Eugenio has served on national and institutional committees related to experimental-facility planning, detector R&D, and graduate education in physics.