Research opportunities for undergraduate students
There are exciting opportunities for undergraduate students of all levels to
participate in Experimental Particle Physics research. Contact Prof. Gritsan
for further details. There is an option of conducting research for academic credit.
Provost's Undergraduate Research Award Application
is an excellent opportunity to start a research project. Prof. Gritsan will sponsor
a prospective student (freshman, sophomore, or junior level) in the above application
for up to $2,500 for either the summer or the fall.
This program will not only enhances a student's
learning experience, but will help develop important skills in proposal writing,
obtaining research funding, carrying out a project, and reporting the results.
All these skills are highly valued in further academic and industry careers.
For example, you can see a part of the project for which Manisha Narayanan,
an undergraduate student at JHU, was awarded the Provost's Undergraduate
Research Award in the 2010-2011 academic year (see the article
"
Hadron collisions reach out to people in Washington"
in CMS Times)
The projects are to learn and apply data analysis techniques on the
CMS high-energy physics experiment on the Large
Hadron Collider (LHC) or/and to develop an outreach projects which communicates
LHC results to the public. Technical aspects of the data analysis work involve
modern computer applications in high energy physics. Some experience with
modern computer languages and operating systems (e.g. UNIX/C++) is desired
but not required.
See discussion of the projects for the graduate students.
Research opportunities for graduate students
Alignment of Silicon Vertex Detectors and
Physics Analysis Techniques in Frontier Particle Physics
Learn both hardware and software requirements
on alignment of the silicon vertex detectors on
the CMS experiment.
Perform Monte Carlo modeling and LHC data analysis
in search for new fundamental particles and interactions.
Technical aspects of the work involve
modern computer applications in high energy physics:
-
UNIX (Linux) operating system
-
C/C++ programming language
- ROOT Data Analysis Framework, based on C++
-
CMS Reconstruction software
Some experience with some of the above items (UNIX/C++) is desired.
Course in Elementary Particle Physics
(171.731/171.408)
is recommended but not required.
You can read more about the CMS experiment in the
Technical Design Report
(Volume 1 about the Detector and Computing, Volume 2 about Physics).
Research opportunities for postdoctoral fellows
There are job opportunities for postdoctoral fellows on
CMS at JHU. Contact Prof. Gritsan or other members of the
CMS group at JHU.
With the LHC operating, there are exciting opportunities
to participate in the first physics discoveries.
