News Release

Petar Maksimovic, assistant professor of physics at Johns Hopkins University, has received the Sloan Research Fellowship to study the collision of protons and anti-protons when they are accelerated to the speed of light.

Specifically, he is looking into the so-called "Standard Model" of particle interactions, which has been the accepted theory for 25 years but which Maksimovic calls "theoretically unsatisfactory."

"In particular, I am studying the weak interactions of quarks [building blocks of matter] and will use them to search for the effects of the physics beyond the Standard Model," he said. "Some of these effects may also ... hint at the origin of the mysterious 'dark matter' that makes up about one third of the universe."

Maksimovic was one of 116 young scientists and economists to receive Sloan Research Fellowships this year in recognition of their potential to contribute to academic advancement. Over its 49-year-old history, the Sloan Foundation has awarded $103 million to support nearly 4,000 scholars.

Maksimovic has been an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins since 2001. Maksimovic was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1968, and attended the University of Belgrade from 1988 to 1992. He earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

For more information about the Sloan Research Fellowship, contact Gwendolyn Knowles at 2121-649-1649.