LHC Physics Center

What I will be working on:

My primary goal as an LPC DR is to leverage unconventional track signatures to discover Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) physics. I'm particularly interested in long-lived BSM particles which travel a measurable distance before decaying, resulting in anomalous or displaced tracks, as well as strongly coupled hidden valley models that result in large multiplicities of low momentum charged particles. Both of these scenarios are extremely challenging for the trigger and reconstruction, and represent a major opportunity for discovery in upcoming LHC Runs. I am currently leading the first CMS search for soft-unclustered energy patterns, and co-convening CMS's long lived particle group in Exotics. As a DR, I also hope to build up the vibrant community interested in long-lived particles at the LPC, and identify ways to further our sensitivity in Run 3 and at the High Luminosity LHC. I also work on module characterization for the Phase 2 Outer Tracker Upgrade at Fermilab's silicon detector facility.

My role in CMS past and present:

I joined CMS in 2019 after completing a PhD on the ATLAS Experiment. While on ATLAS I performed several searches for long-lived particles in Supersymmetric scenarios, focusing on signatures with displaced Inner Detector vertices and displaced muons. I also spent a great deal of my time working on the ATLAS Muon Spectrometer: as an on-call expert, developing online and offline data-quality, and commissioning new drift-tube chambers. When I first came to CMS I began working on the Endcap Timing Layer upgrade for Phase 2, testing prototype low gain avalanche sensors together with front-end electronics on the bench and in test beam. I also worked on the first observation of tribosons, as a way to indirectly test our sensitivity to new physics, before settling back into searches for unconventional signatures.