The Next Step

I’m off to Syracuse University! I’ll be starting as an assistant professor this August. It’s a great department, I can continue my work with NOvA and DUNE, and I’ll start teaching in the spring. If you know a prospective grad student or postdoc who’s interested in experimental neutrino physics, send them my way!

CERN Visit

I’m looking forward to seeing CERN again during the DUNE collaboration meeting. It’s been a while! I wonder how much has changed and who I’ll run into from my ATLAS days. It would be cool if I could squeeze in a trip to Geneva or Ferney, too. It’s going to be a busy meeting, though. Finally get to share the latest findings from our liquid argon and xenon-doping tests!

Baby Loves Physics!

Oh! I have to share. I just found these at a bookstore on my recent trip to Fermilab. At 10 months Rosie’s still a little young for the narrative but the illustrations are lovely and they’re fun for me to read. She’ll be able to follow the words before long, though, and the author has done a marvellous job writing about quarks and rocketry. I hope there are more on the horizon. Maybe “Baby Loves Neutrinos!”

    

Faculty Search

I’m having fun putting together my application materials for this year’s round of open faculty positions. I’m feeling quite proud of my research with NOvA and DUNE and the accomplishments of the students I’ve been working with. This is an exciting time for long-baseline neutrino physics and I hope I can convey that to the search committees. It’s been my goal since undergrad to conduct physics research and teach advanced topics to the highest level students. There are several opportunities out there this year that would be a perfect match. Wish me luck. Here we go!

The Neutrino Cocktail

Wow, this is a really great write-up of neutrino mixing and what we’re after with our long-baseline experiments. Check it out: http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/the-neutrino-cocktail

Visit to Northwestern U.

Just got back from a great trip to Northwestern. Thanks to the folks up there for inviting me to share our recent results on liquid argon scintillation and light guide photon detector development. It was a great exercise for getting my job talk together and a great opportunity for some fruitful discussions. I was particularly interested in the work that Eric Dahl is doing with PICO for dark matter detection with bubble chambers. It’s pretty neat that such an old technology is still so relevant. Now I want to explore using one as a neutral current neutrino interaction detector in front of one of the near detectors at Fermilab! I also had a great chat with Andre de Govia and his grad students Kevin and Jeff. They’ve gotten me quite interested in the state of tau neutrino appearance at DUNE, something which surprisingly does not seem to be a hot topic yet. So now I have several more projects that I’d like to tackle when I’m junior faculty with my own program. Advice to self: Lots to choose from… so choose carefully!

New Papers

Happy New Year! I have papers to share! My paper on the liquid argon scintillation structure is just about through the publication process with JINST (we just submitted our minor changes), and I just okayed the proofs on my LIDINE conference proceedings. Pretty cool. Here are the arXiv links for now.

Scintillation Light from Cosmic-Ray Muons in Liquid Argon
http://arxiv.org/abs/1408.1763

Photon Detection System Designs for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment
http://arxiv.org/abs/1511.06345

Vote for me!

I’m running for the position of IB representative for Young DUNE. We’re the grad students, postdocs, and anyone young at heart (without a direct supervisory role over other members, of course). I’m excited to play a role in the collaboration management and to get our social media presence up and running. Here’s my statement:

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Hello, Young DUNE. Thank you for considering me as your IB Representative. This is my third year as a postdoc with Indiana University and I’m excited to continue with DUNE over the coming years. The majority of my effort is R&D toward the photon detection system for the single-phase TPC far detector design. DUNE presents a varied and engaging set of challenges and I believe it is an outstanding platform for young researchers to develop a wide range of skills.

It is vital that the future leadership of DUNE works now to help steer the direction of the collaboration. Important issues like publication policies and roles in the upcoming prototype projects will be decided in these meetings. I will keep you informed of the points under discussion, share my opinions, solicit feedback from you on the issues, and ensure your voice is heard when decisions are made. As a member of the Speaker’s Board I will also work to highlight opportunities for talks that would be valuable for our Young DUNE constituents and make sure we have appropriate priority. Finally, the young members of this experiment stand the best chance of engaging the public and building interest in our science. We will be leading the next decade of particle physics and I will put together a crack team of social media experts from our ranks to share our excitement and fun.

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Wish me luck!

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Edit (1/21/16):  Cool. I am the new IB representative for DUNE. I’m also heading up the social media effort, although we have several excited people ready to help out. This’ll be fun.

Job Search Underway

I’ve learned a lot about experimental neutrino physics here at IU. The science is great and I definitely enjoy the challenges of both detector development and analysis. DUNE is now underway and there’s a clear path of projects from here to there covering hardware, software, and physics analysis. There’s plenty work for me and for capable graduate and undergraduates to develop their skills. I feel ready to helm a ship of my own, so the applications are going out. Wish me luck!

LIght Detection in Noble Elements

What a great conference. It was a pleasure to help organize the second-ever LIDINE conference (link), bringing together experts from across a wide range of experiments. SUNY University at Albany hosted about 75 participants from neutrino and dark matter experiments who are experts in using the scintillation signal from argon, xenon, and even krypton, neon, and helium.

I had several fruitful conversations with old and new acquaintances, covering topics like wavelength shifters, silicon photomultipliers (a hot topic!), doped/contaminated liquid argon, and UV detector efficiencies. I also learned a lot about the various dark matter efforts underway around the world. (I learned a lot about the logistics of conference organization, too!)

Keep an eye out for the conference proceedings in a special edition of JINST. They’ll cover a wide range of topics and will be of great value to anyone pursuing particle detector work with noble elements. This was definitely a conference to hold again!