James P Vary

James P. Vary is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and Past Director of the International Institute of Theoretical and Applied Physics (IITAP) at Iowa State University (ISU). He graduated from Boston College (B.S., 1965, Magna Cum Laude), and Yale University (M.S. ,1966 and Ph.D., 1970). He spent two postdoctoral years at MIT's Center for Theoretical Physics and three years at Brookhaven National Laboratory as Assistant then Associate Physicist. In 1975, he joined the faculty at Iowa State University and has fostered the development of a high-energy nuclear theory group (see Spring 2024 photos under the tab: Research Group).

Professor Vary's research activities span strong interaction physics from ab-initio nuclear structure theory to include fundamental tests of nature's symmetries and to nuclear applications of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). Computational Physics and Quantum Computing are also major areas of emphasis.

He has mentored 26 PhD students and has authored or co-authored more than 550 refereed publications and 5 books of conference proceedings. He has delivered more than 600 invited lectures at conferences and at universities in more than 50 countries.

Prof. Vary served a 4-year term (2002-2005) on the Council of the American Physical Society and a two-year term on the Executive Board of the American Physical Society (2004-2005). More recently, he served on the Users Executive Committee of the DOE National Energy Research Supercomputer Center (NERSC) and on the American Physical Society's Governance Committee.

Prof. Vary is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2023 he received a Distinguished Scientist Award of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' President's International Fellowship Initiative.