Physics Department Awarded Grant for Research in High Energy
Baylor University's physics department was recently awarded a three-year, $360,000 grant by the United States Department of Energy for its submission titled, "Elementary Particle Physics at Baylor," a project dedicated to research in high energy physics.
The Department of Energy awarded the grant through its Division of High Energy Physics of the Office of Science. It is one of the most competitive federally-funded fundamental physics research programs in the nation.
"This award shows that the U.S. Department of Energy has recognized the research done by the physics department as an achievement of significant impact for national and international mainstream conversations in the field of high energy physics," said Dr. B.F.L. Ward, department chair and distinguished professor of physics. "This type of achievement shows that the physics department is making significant progress toward its Vision 2012 goals."
The grant consists of two tasks which include an experimental task directed by Dr. Jay Dittmann, and a theory task directed by Ward and Dr. Scott Yost.
Dittmann, assistant professor of physics, will focus the experimental task on his work with 2TeV proton anti-proton collisions at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., which are being used to address issues such as top quark production and decay, super-symmetric partners of Standard Model particles, large extra dimensions and Higgs physics.
Ward and Yost, associate professor of physics, will focus their task on precision predictions for high energy collider physics in preparation for the physics requirement for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which will begin studying 14TeV proton-proton collisions at CERN, the European Laboratory for Elementary Particle Physics, in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2007.
For more information, contact Ward at (254) 710-4878.