Students
Mentor Connection: High School Students in Research
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The University of Connecticut Mentor Connection provides talented high school students from New England and around the country an opportunity to work with a university faculty mentor on a research project during a 3-week program held on the Storrs campus each summer. In July 2005 two footballers from Bridgeport Connecticut, Okey Gubor and Kennedy Oghayore tackled nuclear physics. The challenge of their three-week project was to design and build an experiment to test a new kind of detector that is sensitive to very low levels of light, so dim that it comes in tiny flashes known as photons. Read the press account of their exploits, or see their slide show for more details. |  |
Undergraduate Students in Research
Our group is actively seeking undergraduates in physics and other majors who would like to gain some experience in scientific research during their studies. Opportunities exist for summer research at all levels, and for senior research projects for physics majors. below.
- Brent Evans is a UConn undergraduate physics major (class of 2004). While still a high school student, Brent began working in our laboratory in summer of 2000. That year he traveled together to Jefferson Lab in Newport News Virginia, where he spent four weeks helping to conduct the Radphi experiment. The summer of 2001 Brent completed a software project in which he wrote a package in Java to control physics simulation on a computer cluster and display the results all from a web browser. This package is used by the Radphi collaboration and is being adapted for use in Hall D. After the completion of that project, Brent has initiated a R&D project in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Glasgow to find a reliable source of high-quality diamonds for use in the photon source for the GlueX experiment (Hall D). January 2001 we traveled to the U.K. to participate in an assessment of synthetic crystals at the Synchrotron Radiation Source in Daresbury, England. Brent presented a report on those experiments at the 2002 UConn Frontiers in Undergraduate Research exhibition.
- Chris Gauthier is a UConn undergraduate physics major (class of 2003). In Fall 2001 Chris assumed responsibility for the design and prototype development of a gamma ray beam collimator for the GlueX experiment at Jefferson Lab. Spring 2002 he was awarded a Summer Research Scholarship by the UConn honors program to support his work on this project during summer 2002. The project involved a design of the instrument, physics simulation of the design, construction of a prototype and test setup, together with publication of the results of tests to be performed in a test beam at Jefferson Lab. Later that year Chris made a presentation of his work to the GlueX collaboration in Glasgow, U.K. His work on background simulations was published as a GlueX technical note.
- Eddie Ackad is an undergraduate physics major at Concordia University (class of 2002). Eddie spent the summer of 2001 working in our laboratory at UConn with support from the Research Experience for Undergraduates NSF program. Eddie carried out a project devoted to simulation of background reactions for the Radphi experiment. In this project he devised a method to simulate of order 100 background reactions with the correct relative weights and predict the dominant sources of background in the Radphi sample of phi radiative decays. Eddie presented his results at the annual Canadian Physics Conference for Undergraduates in Manitoba, November 2001.
- Glen MacLachlan is a UConn undergraduate physics graduate, who completed his degree in May 1998. During the summer of 1997 Glen and I traveled together to Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Virginia where we participated in a two-week run with the RadPhi experiment. Glen subsequently worked with me on his senior research project, which was a comparison of the classical and quantum behavior of a spinning particle in a magnetic field. The project involved following the time-development of classical and quantum particles in various field configurations, and producing computer animations which help to visualize the dynamics. A condensed write-up of this project can be found here. Glen is now pursuing his PhD in the area of experimental nuclear physics at the University of Ohio.
- Karl Rasmussen V came to UConn during the summer of 1997 under the NSF-funded REU program ``Research Experience for Undergraduates.'' During the ten weeks of the program he worked with me on the calculation of particle orbits inside a magnetic spectrometer to be used for parity-violating electron scattering experiments at far-forward scattering angles. Special adaptations of the magnetic optics are required for operation of the spectrometer at very small angles, and still maintain good acceptance and momentum resolution. At the end of the project, Karl presented the results at a meeting of his peers and the Physics Dept.
Graduate Students
Our group is seeking graduate students who want to work in the area of experimental nuclear/particle physics. The present focus of our research is on fixed-target experiments at Jefferson Lab. Experiments in this field are carried out by collaborations of researchers from many institutions, domestic and foreign, which gives a student good opportunities for exposure beyond the local university environment.Igor Senderovich entered the Connecticut PhD program in Fall 2005. He is presently working towards his Masters degree, and is considering several options for his PhD research project.
Wes Gohn entered the Connecticut PhD program in Fall 2004. He is presently working towards his Masters degree, and is considering several options for his PhD research project.
Jim Marie is a physics PhD candidate at the University of Connecticut. In 2002 he joined our group to work on the Qweak experiment at Jefferson Lab. As a result of delays in the start of the the Qweak experiment, in 2003 he shifted his focus to the partial-wave analysis of existing data taken with the Jetset experiment at CERN. In 2004 he completed the analysis of these data and presented his results at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society Division of Nuclear Physics in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His PhD thesis defense date is February 17, 2006.
Mihajlo Kornicer is a physics PhD candidate at the University of Connecticut. In 2000 he joined our group to work on the Radphi experiment at Jefferson Lab. That summer he spent several weeks at JLab helping with the main Radphi physics run that took place that summer. Since then he has focused on Radphi analysis. In 2001 he worked primarily on calibration and simulation issues. In 2002 he has undertaken the project of writing an efficient clusterization library for finding photon clusters in the Radphi calorimeter. This is a key requirement in efficiently reconstructing the 5-gamma final state being searched for in Radphi.
Tom Bogue is a UConn graduate student who plans on doing his thesis in the field of theoretical nuclear physics. During the summer of 1999 Tom has accompanied me to Jefferson Laboratory for a summer research project related to the Radphi experiment. Tom is participating in an experimental run with Radphi and is developing a new analysis code for the experiment that will incorporate information from the new barrel calorimeter into the reconstruction of multi-photon final states.
Andriy Kurylov is a UConn graduate student who plans on doing his thesis in the field of theoretical nuclear physics. During the summer of 1998 Andriy accompanied me to Jefferson Laboratory for a summer research project related to the Radphi experiment. Andriy participated in an experimental run with Radphi and developed a detailed Monte Carlo simulation of the experiment based upon the GEANT software package.
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