LHC Physics Center

What I will be working on:

I will be working primarily on the development of a L1 track trigger for the phase 2 upgrade of CMS. Fermilab plays a leading role in the Associative Memory + FPGA approach and I have been collaborating with the group for over one year. I am a main author of a Linearized Track Fit algorithm for CMS, a novel method for extracting track parameters and estimating a chi^2 with simple scalar products and yielding almost offline-level of accuracy. During 2016, full hardware demonstrators will be built and operated and their performance will guide the choice of which L1 track trigger approach the CMS Collaboration will pursue. I will continue to study the performance of the algorithm and further improve it as needed. I will also work on its integration in the full L1 track trigger simulation, and on the development of an FPGA firmware implementation for the hardware demonstrator.

I will also be working on a search for stop-stop production in the VBF channel where the stop decays to a top quark and the LSP. The analysis requires two forward jets (VBF) plus MET and in addition it requires at least one soft lepton. This analysis is complementary to other SUSY searches that look for hadronic decays or high pT leptons and it has the potential to extend the sensitivity to compressed SUSY scenarios thanks to the low pT requirement on the lepton.

My role in CMS past and present:

I joined CMS during my PhD in 2003 and I have been part of the collaboration since then. I covered several leading roles in both detector calibration and operation, and data analysis. In 2011 I was convener of the SiStrip Tracker Calibration, Local Reconstruction and Simulation group and I was later elected convener of the Alignment and Calibration for the full CMS for the years of 2012-2013. I had leading roles in several physics analyses such as: Measurement of the Upsilon cross section with the first data LHC (2010 data), first observation of the rare decay Bs→mumu, first observation of Upsilon suppression in heavy ions, search for long-lived particles in dilepton final states. I am now heavily involved with the development of a track trigger for the CMS phase 2 upgrade.