Junko Shigemitsu, professor emerita in the Department of Physics at Ohio State, is a leader in lattice gauge theory or lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD), a method for calculating the properties of subatomic particles from first principles using supercomputers.
She has played a central role in the development of lattice QCD into a practical tool that gives new insights into the fundamental properties of matter. She was co-founder and co-leader of the international HPQCD Collaboration, one of the most successful lattice QCD groups in the world. The HPQCD Collaboration was the first group to show that many known properties of subatomic particles could be calculated to within a few percent errors. Their results have been crucial for interpreting new measurements from high-energy physics experiments.
Shigemitsu published over 80 papers in top-tier physics journals and her papers have accumulated more than 4,000 citations. She is a fellow of the American Physical Society and was awarded Ohio State’s distinguished scholar award in 2011.