There are four forces in nature: the gravitational force, the electromagnetic force, the weak nuclear force, and the strong force. Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is the theoretical framework that describes the strong nuclear force. The fundamental particles that interact via this force are the quarks and gluons that build up protons and neutrons, which in turn build up the nuclei that are at the cores of all atoms. This project aims to study the nature of matter at very high temperatures (about a million times hotter than the sun’s core), where the particles within the matter interact via the strong nuclear force. At these high temperatures, nuclear matter reaches a phase called the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). The primary goal of this project is to achieve a better understanding of the nature of matter governed by strong force interaction. This will allow better explanations of the early phase of the big bang when the universe underwent a transition from a QGP to hot gas of neutrons and protons. This transition occurred prior to the formation of light nuclei, big-bang nucleosynthesis (ten minutes after the start of the big bang), or the formation of atoms (one hundred thousand years later). High energy collisions of nuclei are also dominated by strong force interactions. The primary activity of this project is the study of high energy nuclear interactions produced at two major accelerator facilities: the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).