Group News

• CERN covers our muon tomography work with GEMs as an example of CMS technology transfer (Apr '17).
• Florida Tech TODAY features our GEM work in the high-bay in the Winter '17 issue.
• Our CMS effort receives a $585,000 funding continuation from DOE's Office of Science (HEP) for 2015-19. Dr. Hohlmann continues as P.I. of the $1.2M DOE HEP core grant at FIT (May '15).
• Our recent graduates participate in prestigious summer research programs including in programs abroad: Jessie @ JLab (via DOE SULI), Liz @ Frascati (via DOE-INFN scholarship), Mike @ BNL (via DOE SULI) (summer 2014).
• Shreeya Khanal, Mike Phipps, Liz Starling, Jessie Twigger, and Kimberly Walton win our second Northrop-Grumman Science Championship at the 2014 annual Florida Tech Science & Engineering showcase with their presentations on GEMs with zigzag strips. In addition, Mike Phipps wins the "Best of Show" award in Physics for his particular contribution. (For details see also our Conferences page).
• Florida Tech researchers cheer Nobel physics award; article in FloridaToday on the occasion of the Nobel prize award to Peter Higgs and Francois Englert for the Higgs mechanism (Oct '13).
• Aiwu Zhang and Vallary Bhopatkar assemble and operate the first ever 1m-class GEM detector produced outside of CERN.
• Our undergraduates participate in prestigious summer research programs including in programs abroad: Ankit @ U. Muenster (via DAAD scholarship), Jessie @ Frascati (via DOE-INFN scholarship), Mike @ Columbia, Nevis Labs (Summer '13).
• BNL increases our EIC R&D funding to $150,000 total (Mar '13).
• Dr. Aiwu Zhang joins us from IHEP Beijing as our new post-doctoral research associate on the EIC project (June '13).
• Christian Zelenka wins "Best of Show" in Physics for his poster on muon tomography at the annual FIT-Northrop Grumman Science & Engineering showcase (April '13).
• Dr. H. receives 'Most Valuable Panther MVP' award (Dec '12).
• Lenny Grasso and Mike Staib graduate with M.S. degrees in Physics (May '12). Congratulations!
• Ben Locke, Mike Staib, and Dr. Hohlmann attend the Posters on the Hill event on Capitol Hill in Washinton D.C. (April '12).
• Liz Starling wins "Best of Show" in Physics for her poster on our infrared GEM foil stretching technique at the annual FIT-Northrop Grumman Science & Engineering showcase (April '12) .
• The Economist features an article on our muon tomography project in its April 7th, 2012 print edition. Online version of the article with some interesting commentary (April '12).
• Our group sweeps the P/SS session at the 2012 annual meeting of the Florida Academy of Science. Nathan, Kim, and Himali win FAS awards for their presentations (March '12).
• Our CMS effort receives a $360,000 funding continuation from DOE's Office of Science (HEP) for 2012-14. Dr. Hohlmann becomes P.I. of the DOE HEP core grant at FIT (March '12).

Award Season in HEP Lab A: At the Spring 2011 Honors Convocation a number of our students are honored for their academic achievements (April '11):

• Xenia Fave, Academic Award for Excellence for Womenfrom the American Association of University Women and Florida Tech Distinguished Student Scholar
• Johanna-Laina Fischer, Outstanding Junior P/SS
• Ben Locke, Florida Tech Distinguished Student Scholar
• Bryant Benson, John E. Miller Award for best Graduate Teaching Assistant P/SS

• Will Bittner is accepted into the highly competitive IBM Extreme Blue Internship program (May '11). He subsequently accepts full time employment at the IBM Linux Technology Center in Austin, TX.
• Ben Locke, Will Bittner, and Lenny Grasso win the Northrop-Grumman Science Championship at the annual Florida Tech Science & Engineering showcase and the "Best of Show" award of the College of Science with their presentation (April '11, also for details see our Conferences page).
• Bryant Benson successfully defends his M.S. thesis (May '11).
• Marcus Hohlmann, Samir Guragain (Ph.D '10), Himali Kalakhety CMS analysis research featured in Fermilab Today (March '11)
• Alumna Georgia Karagiorgi (B.S.'04) is quoted in a Physics Today article on results of her Ph.D. thesis at MIT on antineutrino oscillations measured with MiniBooNE at FNAL.
• DOE-Science (HEP) funds an upgrade of our Tier-3 Grid clusteroperations with $30k from the 2009/10 American Recovery & Reinvestment Act, aka the "Stimulus" bill (Sep '10).
• Two-part Campus Research Report article appears in FIT Crimson: Part 1 on Muon Tomography; Part 2 on CMS (Sep '10).
• Samir Guragain successfully defends his Ph.D. thesis (Sep '10).
• Marcus Hohlmann talks with Courtland Lewis about the LHC on "American Variety," a radio show broadcast on three NPR stations in central Florida. Air dates: Sunday 5/9 & 9/5, 2010 on WFIT-89.5 FM (Melbourne) and Wednesday 5/12 & 9/8, 2010 on WMFE-90.7 FM (Orlando) and WQCS-88.9 FM (Ft.Pierce).
• Listen to the webcast (big - 25 MB!) if you missed it on the radio.
• WIRED.com, the online version of WIRED magazine, covers recent progress with our Muon tomography project with an articlein their Wired Science Blog (July 1, 2010). The article also got picked up by the Global Security Newswire a day later.
• Amilkar Quintero successfully defends his M.S. thesis (June'10).
• Fourth-year funding from DHS for our Muon Tomography project puts total funding for this project at $1,255,000 (May '10).
• Muon Tomography data taken with GEM detectors at CERN establishes first proof-of-concept of our method (Apr '10).
• Our CMS effort receives a funding continuation in the amount of $160,000 from DOE's Office of Science (HEP) for 2009-11.
• Mike Abercrombie and Ben Locke are each given awards for an "Outstanding Undergraduate Paper" in Physics & Space Science at the 2010 annual meeting of the Florida Academy of Science (March 2010).
• Ben Locke accepted into the 2010 `Research for Undergraduates (REU)' program at CERN organized by U. of Michigan (March '10). He is also named Fl. Tech's "Outstanding Junior" (May '10).
• Himali Kalakhety accepted with a stipend into the 5th Fermilab-CERN Hadron Collider Physics Summer School to be held at Fermilab in August 2010 (May '10).
• Jen Helsby wins "Undergraduate Student Paper Award in Physics & Space Science" at annual meeting of Florida Academy of Science 2008 with a presentation on "Muon Tomography for Detection of Nuclear Contraband with High Performance Computing Infrastructure." Congrats! See the FIT news release. (4/30/08)
• Marcus Hohlmann Earns $380,000 for Muon Research and Grid Computing
• 09/18/2009, see press release in FIT Newsroom
• Florida Tech and International Collaboration to Solve Mysteries of Universe
• 09/03/2008, see press release in FIT Newsroom
• Using GEMs for the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (Fall 2009), from 2009 College Research News and Report for the College of Science at the Florida Insititute of Technology
• Samir Guragain receives full travel grant to attend the School on Physics at LHC: "Expecting LHC" at the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy, in Sep 2006.
• Laszlo Baksay Named to UNESCO Scientific Board 05/26/2009, from FIT Newsroom
• Laszlo Baksay elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society 12/05/2008, from 2009 College Research News and Report for the College of Science at the Florida Insititute of Technology
• Florida Tech HEP group works on CERN's CMS project (Fall 2008) from 2009 College Research News and Report for the College of Science at the Florida Insititute of Technology
• Homeland Security Recognizes Marcus Hohlmann’s Research with $589,000 Continuation Grant
• 05/19/2008, from FIT Newsroom
• Jennifer Helsby's Paper Takes First Prize at Florida Academy of Sciences Meeting
• 05/07/2008, from FIT Newsroom
• Samir Guragain gets his dissertation proposal accepted and is an official Ph.D. candidate (4/28/08).
• National Science Foundation Supports Florida Tech's "Creativity in Physics"
• 06/26/2007, from FIT Newsroom
• Marcus Hohlmann's Passion for Particles Finds Funding 04/30/2007, from FIT Newsroom
• Samir Guragain receives full travel grant to attend the School on Physics at LHC: "Expecting LHC" at the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy, in Sep 2006.
• Nick Leioatts Completes Summer Work at Fermi Lab 09/11/2006, FIT Newsroom
• 2006 summer Quarknet Workshop with 3 high school teachers and 4 high school students from 06/05/2006---June 5 - 07/14/2006.
• Dept. of Energy (DOE) supports M. Hohlmann with $134,000 core research grant for three years starting June 2006. In addition, the CMS experiment and Fermilab support him with $26,000 for Maintenance and Operation of the CMS detector in FY06.
• Klaus Dehmelt Earns Graduate Student Award 4/27/2006, from FIT Newsroom
• Marcus Hohlmann Lectures on the Subatomic World of Particle Physics 03/09/2006, from FIT Newsroom
• Florida Tech Collects More Data Than Any Other QuarkNet Group 09/27/2005, from FIT Newsroom
• Undergraduate research students accepted into Ivy League schools: Georgia Karagiorgi was accepted into Ph.D. programs in particle physics at Columbia and Yale; update: she enrolls at Columbia. Sara Walker was accepted into the Ph.D. program at Dartmouth College. Both were offered assistantships. 2005 academic year.
• Five students from our group presented their recent research results at the March 2005 meeting of the Florida Academy of Sciences.
• QuarkNet 1-day workshop on April 8, 2005. We welcome Robert Peterson (Fermilab) who will introduce teachers and students to QN data analysis with the new Fermilab Web Portal.
• M.S. student Marion Ripert admitted with full scholarship into the 2-week US Particle Accelerator School to be held at UC Berkeley, January 10-21, 2005
• Fermilab supports work on CMS muon alignment with $10,675 grant.
• Julie Slanker receives co-op in instrumentation division at KSC.
• Georgia Karagiorgi receives Wilbur Dean Johnston international student scholarship established by Dr. Mary Helen McCay, research prof. in FIT's college of engineering.
• Next new QuarkNet Workshop is coming up. 16 teachears attending now, from various high schools from Florida; (June 7-11, 2004)
• Marcus Hohlmann (convener) & Laszlo Baksay: started Florida Tech GRID initiative; Students working on this project are: Klaus Dehmelt (Physics), Marcus Barry (Computer Science), Amit Abhyankar (Computer Science); (05/19)
• Julie Slanker and Georgia Karagiorgi featured with photographs in AAPT Announcer weekly journal (Spring 2004)
• Gyongyi Baksay (Liaison, Forum on International Physics, Forum on Graduate Student Affairs) is co-organizing APS March/April meeting FIP-FGSA round table sessions and CAM 2005 conference; (05/19)
• Gyongyi Baksay receives travel grant from DPF (APS Division of Particles and Fields) to present dissertation results at APS April meeting in Denver, Colorado (04/14)