Sylvester is an experimental physicist in the Physics Division. His research focuses on the features and emergent phenomena of the strong interaction and its gauge theory, quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Central questions to his program are: What is the gluonic structure of the proton? How does the mass of the proton emerge from its gluonic structure? Does the presence of a nuclear medium modify the proton ground state? When removed from a proton, why does a quark dress itself into a jet of new hadrons? His expertise lies with exclusive channels in electron-proton scattering, such as deeply-virtual meson production (DVMP) and deeply-virtual Compton scattering (DVCS), as well as semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering (SIDIS). He started his experimental journey at the HERMES experiment in DESY and is currently focused on electron scattering experiments at Jefferson Lab (CLAS12 and Hall C) while preparing for the upcoming SoLID experiment and the electron-ion collider (EIC). His research interests also include scientific computing and the development of detectors for future high-luminosity experiments. Sylvester joined the Physics Division in 2018. 

Education

• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Ph.D. in Physics, 2013
• Ghent University (Belgium), M.S. in Physics, 2007
• Ghent University (Belgium), B.S. in Physics, 2005