Marc Osherson, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Notre Dame, has been honored with a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award — one of the most prestigious recognitions for early-career faculty in the United States.
The CAREER Award supports faculty who show promise in both research and education. Osherson's five-year project hopes to discover signs of exotic new physics at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), in Geneva, Switzerland. The LHC is the world’s most powerful particle accelerator.
“The research being undertaken at the LHC represents our best efforts to understand how nature works on the smallest scales,” Osherson said. “I’m honored to receive this award, which will enable my group at Notre Dame to keep pushing towards new discoveries.”
Using the Compact Muon Solenoid detector (CMS), one of the four main detectors at the LHC, Osherson's research targets complex particle interactions predicted by theories that go beyond the Standard Model — the foundational theory of particle physics.
Osherson is developing advanced data analysis techniques, including re-imagining facial recognition tools to help interpret complex data produced by the CMS detector, in hopes of revealing entirely new particles or interactions. Using these approaches, Osherson and collaborators can quickly sift through the billions of events generated at the LHC and focus on potential signatures of new physics.
“This is an important recognition of Prof. Osherson’s work and his standing in the high-energy physics community,” said Morten Eskildsen, chair in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. “I am also happy to note that this marks the third year in a row that an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy has won an NSF CAREER Award!”
As part of the grant, he plans to integrate his research into the undergraduate curriculum, as well as expand outreach to high school students and others in the community through hands-on workshops and public engagement events.
Osherson earned his bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University.