Newswise — NEWPORT NEWS, VA – Tommaso Rainaldi had a nontraditional path to physics. He is one of a set of triplets, born and raised in the small Italian town of Grosseto. He became a junior world champion roller skater. But the hard sciences also intrigued him in his youth. And so, after middle school, when Rainaldi was given the choice of which high school to attend, he chose the Liceo Scientifico, or what he calls the “scientific one.” After high school, Rainaldi recalled recently, “I knew I wanted to continue studying, and physics really called to me because it seemed where everything started to make sense.” Rainaldi went on to earn a bachelor’s in physics and a master’s in theoretical physics at the University of Pisa. Then, in September 2025, a doctorate in theoretical physics at Old Dominion University in Norfolk. His doctoral work was spent under the aegis of ODU associate professor of physics Ted Rogers, delving deeper into hadronic structure — the composite subatomic particles that make up almost all visible mass in the universe — with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. Now, Rainaldi’s dissertation about that research has earned him the 2025 Jefferson Science Associates (JSA) Thesis Prize, a top honor for graduate students in nuclear physics. “When I was told I was awarded the prize, I finally felt that the research we have been doing so far means something, and people recognize it,” Rainaldi said. “I am sure there were a lot of talented people among the candidates, both theoreticians and experimentalists, and I cannot possibly know why they were not chosen. I can only say that my work tried to connect three different groups: the theoreticians, the experimentalists and the phenomenologists (sometimes these categories are not mutually exclusive). “But