A step back into physics, by way of computing

People sometimes describe high-energy physics as a step away from my main work. From where I’m standing it’s the opposite. My undergraduate degree was in physics at NIU. I spent three summers at Fermilab during those years, and I started graduate school in physics before computing pulled me in another direction. So a project that sits between computer science and experimental particle physics isn’t unfamiliar territory. It’s territory I started in.

Careers don’t always go in straight lines, and the parts I’ve enjoyed most have almost always been the interdisciplinary ones. Pure single-field work has its rewards, but the interesting questions, in my experience, tend to live in the overlaps. Particle physics needs serious computing to function. Computing benefits from being pointed at problems that don’t bend. Putting students inside both at once, before they’ve decided which side they belong on, seems like the right thing to do.

The new DOE training grant we picked up does exactly that. The program, Chicagoland Computational Traineeship in High Energy Particle Physics (C2-the-P2), is a $2.6M, five-year award led by NIU particle physicist Jahred Adelman, with NIU co-investigators Vishnu Zutshi, Jerry Blazey, and Mike Eads. On the UIC side I’m working with Rick Cavanaugh, who brings the physics expertise. Trainees work alongside researchers at Argonne and Fermilab, which lands me back in a building I haven’t worked in since I was an undergraduate.

What I appreciate about how the program is built is that the funding goes where it should. “The great thing about this grant is that the overwhelming majority of the funding goes directly to students,” Adelman noted, with stipends and tuition reimbursement built in. Training programs work or fail on whether the students can afford to take part, and this one is structured so they can.

More information is at the program website and the NIU news release.