Andrew Ivanov Receives DOE Early Career Award

Andrew Ivanov, assistant professor of physics, has been selected to receive a prestigious Department of Energy (DOE) Early Career Research Award. Dr. Ivanov's proposal, "Quest for a Top Quark Partner and Upgrade of the Pixel Detector Readout Chain at the CMS," is expected to be funded by the DOE Office of Science at a total of $750,000 over the five year award.

Recently the Higgs boson was discovered at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The Higgs boson completes the table of fundamental particles predicted in the Standard Model of particle physics. Nonetheless, the Standard Model does not explain why the Higgs boson has the mass that is observed. Any natural explanation requires an extension of the model and predicts the existence of a partner of the top quark. Ivanov's research proposal focuses on searches for the partner of the top quark at the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the LHC. In order to maintain a large potential for new physics discovery, the project also aims to improve the performance of the CMS Pixel Detector system by upgrading the data acquisition readout for future high energy and high luminosity physics runs at the LHC.

There were about 770 proposals submitted to the program areas: Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR); Biological and Environmental Research (BER); Basic Energy Sciences (BES), Fusion Energy Sciences (FES); High Energy Physics (HEP), and Nuclear Physics (NP). Out of these proposals, 61 were selected, including Dr. Ivanov's.