February 21, 2002 Natalia Kuznetsova Fermilab 1 High Energy Physics as a Career I am a postdoctoral fellow in High Energy Physics at Fermilab I am originally from Minsk, Belarus. I got my B.A. in physics from Kenyon College, a small liberal arts school in central Ohio In August 2001, I got my Ph. D. in high energy physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara I came to Fermilab in September Natalia Kuznetsova Natalia Kuznetsova Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

February 21, 2002 Natalia Kuznetsova Fermilab 2 What do I do? I am a member of CDF collaboration CDF = C ollider D etector at F ermilab Asia Total: 11 countries 55 institutions 525 physicists

February 21, 2002 Natalia Kuznetsova Fermilab 3 CDF Detector We use the CDF detector to observe the results of very high energy proton- antiproton collisions Because E = mc 2, the higher the energy of your colliding particles, the more "stuff" comes out of the collision.

February 21, 2002 Natalia Kuznetsova Fermilab 4 What's inside a detector? Different sub-detectors in a single particle detector are used for detecting and analyzing different types of particles

February 21, 2002 Natalia Kuznetsova Fermilab 5 Results of proton-antiproton collision

February 21, 2002 Natalia Kuznetsova Fermilab 6 What's a typical day like? It's hard to describe a typical day -- what you get to do varies greatly, and there is a great deal of freedom to do whatever you want. Typically, you are involved in three things: –Maintaining some particular subsystem of the detector (hardware) –Writing code for analyzing the data (software) And you get to learn LOTS of different computer languages! –Actually performing data analysis -- coming up with new ideas, etc.. Most people in HEP work long hours, but they do so by choice

February 21, 2002 Natalia Kuznetsova Fermilab 7 Some things you might do on a typical day… Taking detector shifts… Taking care of electronics… Writing software…

February 21, 2002 Natalia Kuznetsova Fermilab 8 What is it like? Because our experiments are so huge, it takes a lot of people to get things going So you get to interact with lots of people -- physicists and engineers –This has both good and bad sides… ATLAS Future ATLAS Collaboration at CERN: nearly 2,000 people!

February 21, 2002 Natalia Kuznetsova Fermilab 9 Careers and salaries If you would like to stay in academia and do basic research, the typical career progression is: – grad student  postdoc  assistant professor  full professor The level of responsibility and the amount of competition increases at each step Occupation Salary range (Doctoral) Grad. student (Doctoral) Grad. student Postdoc/Assistant professor Full professor Full professor ~20k 90k ->… 35-50k

February 21, 2002 Natalia Kuznetsova Fermilab 10 Qualifications To be a high energy physicist doing basic research, you need: –Academically: a Ph.D. –Personally: LOVE PHYSICS!! You are in this for the love and fun of the science, not money. Be self-motivating, capable of learning new things on your ownr and fast, capable of collaborating with lots of other people, somewhat competitive, always curious…

February 21, 2002 Natalia Kuznetsova Fermilab 11 What else can you do with HEP training? Because you get to do so many different things, you are well-prepared for non-academic careers For example, your background in computer programming or designing electronics can be very valuable while applying for industry jobs But the more important thing is, most people who have received HEP training can THINK.

February 21, 2002 Natalia Kuznetsova Fermilab 12 What former UCSB grad students are up to YearStudent Current (or last known) Position 1999D. Langepostdoc, Livermore 1999A. Sonnenscheinpostdoc, Princeton 1998T. Nelsonpostdoc, Fermilab 1996A. RydFairchild Fellow, Caltech 1996C. QiaoProject Leader, Engelhard Sensor Technologies, Goleta 1995M. GrayWall Street 1994D. BordenWall Street 1994D. Sperkacomputer consultant, Madison 1993J. Duboscq research physicist, Ohio St. U. 1993J. Huberresearch physicist, LBNL (medical imaging) 1992D. Schmidtstaff, LANL (medical imaging) 1990R. Stephens assistant professor, U.T. Arlington 1990D. GrummAXAF project, Smithsonian Astrophysical Laboratory 1988T. Barkerassociate professor, U. Colorado 1988T. Browderassociate professor, U. Hawaii

February 21, 2002 Natalia Kuznetsova Fermilab 13 What can you do to become a HEP physicist? Apply to college with a good physics program. Participate in a summer research program for undergraduates Come to Fermilab for a field trip Send me an with questions

February 21, 2002 Natalia Kuznetsova Fermilab 14 SLAC: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center SLAC is located near the beautiful Stanford University campus, at Menlo Park in California (20 min. to the ocean). The research performed at SLAC has been recognized with three Nobel Prizes in physics! is the first U.S. Web site!

February 21, 2002 Natalia Kuznetsova Fermilab 15 SLAC site

February 21, 2002 Natalia Kuznetsova Fermilab 16 The BaBar detector BaBar looks at much lower Energy collisions than CDF

February 21, 2002 Natalia Kuznetsova Fermilab 17 The detector for BaBar I helped build Many particles decay very close to where they were produced. That’s why at the heart of many detectors is a device needed for finding just where this happened. The silicon vertex detector used in the BaBar experiment at SLAC The vertex point

February 21, 2002 Natalia Kuznetsova Fermilab 18 A typical BaBar event