LHC Physics Center

What I will be working on:

During the coming year, I will be working with the SUSY experts at the LPC on the search for new physics in final states involving photons and missing transverse energy. Specifically, we are designing a set of multivariate discriminants to separate regions of phase space likely to contain SUSY events from the Standard Model backgrounds. These discriminants should substantially improve the sensitivity of our current searches, and will likely be necessary to extend our search techniques to look for direct electroweak production of SUSY particles with this decay signature. I will also be exploring the larger questions of optimizing search strategies for low(er) mass SUSY signatures that we may have missed due to their complexity or similarity to the Standard Model. Increased interaction with LPC expertise will also allow more rapid progress on CMS Simulation and Upgrade integration work, as well as increased dialogue on Data and Software preservation issues, both of which are primary interests of mine.