Professor
EEP
Office: Knudsen 4-107F
Phone: 310-825-3471
Email:
Website
My research is centered at the energy frontier of particle physics, where I contribute to the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. Following the completion of three successful data-taking periods, my current efforts are split between exploring new physics in Run-3 and preparing for the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) upgrade scheduled for the early 2030s. This work builds upon a foundation of discovery; during Run-1, I played a leading role in characterizing the Higgs boson through its Z boson and tau decays, while in Run-2, my group leveraged increased center-of-mass energies to search for heavy particles decaying into vector or Higgs bosons. Today, our analysis has shifted toward "Higgs portals," searching for decays into exotic new physics such as long-lived particles.
Beyond discovery searches, I lead instrumental efforts in high-precision electroweak physics. My group recently played a key role in the CMS measurement of the W boson mass, where we calibrated the momentum scale of the world’s largest silicon tracker to an exacting precision of 0.01%. This result demonstrated that the measured W mass remains consistent with theoretical predictions, providing a critical stress test for the Standard Model.
Parallel to data analysis, I am driven by the development of advanced electronics and the implementation of complex firmware algorithms for large-scale Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). For Run-3, we successfully upgraded the CMS muon trigger with a Kalman Filter capable of measuring trajectory curvature in just 150 ns. This R&D program has now produced three generations of custom processors, culminating in the use of AMD Versal Premium FPGAs. These devices support a total throughput of 16 Terabits per second and enable the deployment of real-time AI at the edge of the experiment. We are currently in the production phase for 50 of these processors for the CMS Muon Trigger. The success of this instrumentation program has enabled us to expand into new domains, including the development of control systems for semiconducting qubits and nanosecond-scale intrapulse feedback systems for RF cavities in particle accelerators.