Sean Dobbs

Sean Dobbs is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at Florida State University (FSU). He earned his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 2012 for research on heavy quark mesons at the CLEO experiment at Cornell University. After a postdoctoral position at Northwestern working on the GlueX experiment, he joined FSU's faculty in 2017.

His research focuses on hadronic physics and quantum chromodynamics (QCD), with these primary interests:

• Testing strong interaction limits by searching for exotic states beyond quark models (e.g., hybrid mesons)
• Studying nucleon structure using heavy quark probes
• Developing systems for large-scale data analysis in high-energy physics

Dobbs leads research in major collaborations including:

• GlueX at Jefferson Lab: Mapping light meson spectra and searching for gluonic excitations
• KLF Collaboration: Spectroscopy using K-Long meson beams
• PANDA Collaboration: Proton-antiproton annihilation studies at FAIR, Germany

His publications emphasize photoproduction dynamics, exotic hadron spectroscopy, and spin-density analyses, with consistent focus on experimental validation of QCD predictions. Recent work shows increased attention to near-threshold charmonium production and exotic baryon signatures.

Research is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy. He teaches computational physics (PHZ 4151/5156) and maintains active lab engagement at Jefferson Lab facilities.