James E. Brau

Last updated
James E. Brau
J.E.Brau.jpg
Born
James Edward Brau

1946 (age 77–78)
Alma materMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsHigh energy particles and fields
Institutions
  • Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
  • University of Tennessee
  • University of Oregon
Thesis Inclusive and Semi-inclusive Charge Structure in Pion-Proton Multiparticle Production Reactions at 150 GeV/c
Doctoral advisor Richard K. Yamamoto

James E. Brau (born 1946) is an American physicist at the University of Oregon (UO) who conducts research on elementary particles and fields. He founded the Oregon experimental high energy physics group in 1988 and served as director of the UO Center for High Energy Physics from 1997 to 2016. Prior to joining the Oregon faculty, he served in the Air Force and held positions at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and the University of Tennessee. He is a fellow of both the American Physical Society and also the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2006 he was appointed the Philip H. Knight Professor of Natural Science, an endowed professorship.

Contents

Early life and education

James Edward Brau, son of Rose and James Ernest Brau, was born in 1946 in Tacoma, Washington. He served as student body president at Lincoln High School in Tacoma, [1] where he was graduated in 1965. [2] Brau received an appointment from Rep. Thor Tollefson to the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA), [3] [4] where he double-majored in physics and mathematics, earning a Bachelor of Science in 1969. [5] He earned a Scientiæ Magister degree in physics in 1970 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) working with advisor Irwin A. Pless. [5]

While in the Air Force he took graduate classes at the University of New Mexico in 1972–1973. [5] Based on data collected at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory with research advisor Richard K. Yamamoto, in January 1978 he earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in physics at MIT. He was supported by a Fannie and John Hertz Foundation Fellowship from 1969 to 1970 and 1974–77. [6] [7]

Brau married in 1969 and has two adult sons and four grandchildren. [5]

Career and research

Brau served in the Guidance Test Directorate at Holloman Air Force Base in 1970–1971, and in the Theoretical Branch of the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base during 1971–1974, working with Gregory Canavan. At Kirtland Brau carried out theoretical studies of laser-target interactions, electromagnetic pulse, and charged particle beams. He served as chief of the General Physics Group in 1973–1974, and resigned his Air Force commission in 1974 as a captain. [5]

He was a research associate at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in the bubble chamber experimental research group from 1978 to 1982. There he was responsible for the hybrid bubble chamber facility's lead glass detector, in collaboration with colleagues from Duke University, Florida State University and the University of Tennessee. [8] On the physics faculty at the University of Tennessee from 1982 to 1988, he continued investigations of photoproduction of charmed particles and vector mesons at SLAC. [5] He joined the SLD Collaboration, beginning preparations for an experiment at the SLAC Linear Collider. He studied the design of a uranium calorimeter for SLD and in 1985 published an analysis in collaboration with Tony A. Gabriel — the first to show that despite earlier experimental work, compensation cannot be achieved with liquid argon readout. Using Monte Carlo calculations, Brau and Gabriel showed the importance of low energy neutron interactions with the readout medium hydrogen to achieve compensation. [9]

Brau joined the physics faculty at the University of Oregon in 1988, establishing the first Oregon experimental particle physics group to collaborate with Oregon's existing particle theory group. [10] During early years at Oregon, Brau's research continued to be based on the SLAC Linear Collider where he collaborated on the SLD experiment. He led the design, construction and operation of an innovative silicon-tungsten electromagnetic calorimeter luminosity monitor. [11] During the active period of the Superconducting Supercollider (SSC) Brau joined the GEM detector project. When the SSC was terminated in 1993, he was appointed project manager for the SLD vertex detector upgrade at SLAC, and led the project which produced a 307,000,000 pixel CCD vertex detector for SLD. [12]

The University of Oregon established the Center for High Energy Physics in 1997, with Brau as founding director. The Center sponsors seminars, visiting scientists, interactions between theoretical and experimental physicists, and also supports graduate students. [13]

Brau led the Oregon group into the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Scientific Collaboration in 1997; he was a co-author of the 2016 gravitational wave discovery paper. [14]

Brau's research group participated in the NuTeV experiment at Fermilab and BaBar at PEP-II at SLAC before applying to join the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2005. Brau leads the UO group of faculty, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students at the LHC; in 2012 he was a co-author of the ATLAS Higgs boson discovery paper. [15] [16]

The UO experimental group has grown to include approximately 30 researchers, including five faculty, as well as post-doctoral students, graduate students and undergraduates. The group has been supported since 1988 by a total of more than US$ 30 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. [5]

Brau has served on numerous advisory panels and review committees, including the Department of Energy High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) from 2005 to 2008; the HEPAP Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel, from 2007 to 2011; chair, SLAC Scientific Policy Committee from 2001 to 2004; Fermilab Physics Advisory Committee from 2002 to 2006; Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron Physics Review Committee from 2003 to 2007; the International Advisory Board, Physics at the Terascale, Strategic Helmholtz Alliance, Germany, since 2007; and the International Advisory Committee, International Conference on Calorimetry in Particle Physics, since 2013. [5]

Brau co-chaired the organizing committee of the World-wide Study of the Physics and Detectors for Future Linear electron-positron Colliders from 2002 to 2014. [17] He has been a leader in the worldwide collaboration to design and build the International Linear Collider. [6] [17] [18] In December 2016 Brau was named "Associate Director for Physics and Detectors" of the Linear Collider Collaboration, effective January 2017. [19]

Ph.D. graduates advised

Honors and awards

Upon graduation from USAFA, Brau received the award as Outstanding Cadet in Physics of the Class of 1969. [5] He was a Hertz Foundation Fellow for the duration of his graduate work at MIT. [6] [20]

In 2000, Brau was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society, for "contributions to the development of particle detectors, particularly calorimeters and vertex detectors, and for studies of the properties of the Z boson with the SLD". [21]

Brau is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. [5]

At the University of Oregon in 2006, Brau was named Philip H. Knight Professor of Natural Science, an endowed position funded by Oregon alumnus Philip H. Knight. [5]

In 2009 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, for "distinguished contributions to the field of elementary particle physics, particularly for developing and applying new technologies to facilitate precision tests of the Standard Model". [22] [23]

In 2011, Brau received the University of Oregon Research Innovation Award. [10] In 2012, he was chosen to deliver the Inaugural Presidential Research Lecture at the University of Oregon. [24]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory</span> Research center at Stanford University

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a federally funded research and development center in Menlo Park, California, United States. Founded in 1962, the laboratory is now sponsored by the United States Department of Energy and administrated by Stanford University. It is the site of the Stanford Linear Accelerator, a 3.2 kilometer (2-mile) linear accelerator constructed in 1966 that could accelerate electrons to energies of 50 GeV.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ATLAS experiment</span> CERN LHC experiment

ATLAS is the largest general-purpose particle detector experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator at CERN in Switzerland. The experiment is designed to take advantage of the unprecedented energy available at the LHC and observe phenomena that involve highly massive particles which were not observable using earlier lower-energy accelerators. ATLAS was one of the two LHC experiments involved in the discovery of the Higgs boson in July 2012. It was also designed to search for evidence of theories of particle physics beyond the Standard Model.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Large Electron–Positron Collider</span> Particle accelerator at CERN, Switzerland

The Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) was one of the largest particle accelerators ever constructed. It was built at CERN, a multi-national centre for research in nuclear and particle physics near Geneva, Switzerland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Compact Linear Collider</span> Concept for a linear particle accelerator

The Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) is a concept for a future linear particle accelerator that aims to explore the next energy frontier. CLIC would collide electrons with positrons and is currently the only mature option for a multi-TeV linear collider. The accelerator would be between 11 and 50 km long, more than ten times longer than the existing Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) in California, US. CLIC is proposed to be built at CERN, across the border between France and Switzerland near Geneva, with first beams starting by the time the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has finished operations around 2035.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UA2 experiment</span> Particle physics experiment at CERN

The Underground Area 2 (UA2) experiment was a high-energy physics experiment at the Proton-Antiproton Collider — a modification of the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) — at CERN. The experiment ran from 1981 until 1990, and its main objective was to discover the W and Z bosons. UA2, together with the UA1 experiment, succeeded in discovering these particles in 1983, leading to the 1984 Nobel Prize in Physics being awarded to Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer. The UA2 experiment also observed the first evidence for jet production in hadron collisions in 1981, and was involved in the searches of the top quark and of supersymmetric particles. Pierre Darriulat was the spokesperson of UA2 from 1981 to 1986, followed by Luigi Di Lella from 1986 to 1990.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DELPHI experiment</span>

DELPHI was one of the four main detectors of the Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) at CERN, one of the largest particle accelerators ever made. Like the other three detectors, it recorded and analyzed the result of the collision between LEP's colliding particle beams. The specific focus of DELPHI was on particle identification, three-dimensional information, high granularity (detail), and precise vertex determination.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Collider Detector at Fermilab</span> American experimental physics device (1985–2011)

The Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) experimental collaboration studies high energy particle collisions from the Tevatron, the world's former highest-energy particle accelerator. The goal is to discover the identity and properties of the particles that make up the universe and to understand the forces and interactions between those particles.

Michael Edward Peskin is an American theoretical physicist. He is currently a professor in the theory group at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DØ experiment</span> Particle physics research project (1983–2011)

The DØ experiment was a worldwide collaboration of scientists conducting research on the fundamental nature of matter. DØ was one of two major experiments located at the Tevatron Collider at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. The Tevatron was the world's highest-energy accelerator from 1983 until 2009, when its energy was surpassed by the Large Hadron Collider. The DØ experiment stopped taking data in 2011, when the Tevatron shut down, but data analysis is still ongoing. The DØ detector is preserved in Fermilab's DØ Assembly Building as part of a historical exhibit for public tours.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Charlton</span>

David George Charlton is Professor of Particle Physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Birmingham, UK. From 2013 to 2017, he served as Spokesperson of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Prior to becoming Spokesperson, he was Deputy Spokesperson for four years, and before that Physics Coordinator of ATLAS in the run-up to the start of collision data-taking.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tejinder Virdee</span> British physicist

Sir Tejinder Singh Virdee,, is a Kenyan-born British experimental particle physicist and Professor of Physics at Imperial College London. He is best known for originating the concept of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) with a few other colleagues and has been referred to as one of the 'founding fathers' of the project. CMS is a world-wide collaboration which started in 1991 and now has over 3500 participants from 50 countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Jenni</span> Swiss physicist (born 1948)

Peter Jenni, is an experimental particle physicist working at CERN. He is best known as one of the "founding fathers" of the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider together with a few other colleagues. He acted as spokesperson of the ATLAS Collaboration until 2009. ATLAS is a world-wide collaboration which started in 1992 involving roughly 3,000 physicists at 183 institutions in 38 countries. Jenni was directly involved in the experimental work leading to the discoveries of the W and Z bosons in the 1980s and the Higgs boson in 2012. He is (co-)author of about 1000 publications in scientific journals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Future Circular Collider</span> Proposed particle accelerator

The Future Circular Collider (FCC) is a proposed particle accelerator with an energy significantly above that of previous circular colliders, such as the Super Proton Synchrotron, the Tevatron, and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The FCC project is considering three scenarios for collision types: FCC-hh, for hadron-hadron collisions, including proton-proton and heavy ion collisions, FCC-ee, for electron-positron collisions, and FCC-eh, for electron-hadron collisions.

Stephanie A. Majewski is an American physicist at the University of Oregon (UO) researching high energy particle physics at the CERN ATLAS experiment. She worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the Brookhaven National Laboratory prior to joining the faculty at UO in 2012. She was selected for the Early Career Research Program award of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), one of 35 scientists in all DOE-supported fields to receive this national honor in 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victoria Martin</span> British Professor of Collider Physics

Victoria Jane Martin is a Scottish physicist who is Professor of Collider Physics at the University of Edinburgh. She works on the ATLAS experiment on the Higgs boson.

Michel Davier is a French physicist.

George H. Trilling was a Polish-born American particle physicist. He was co-discoverer of the J/ψ meson which evinced the existence of the charm quark. Trilling joined the Physics Department faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1960, where he was Department Chair from 1968 through 1972. Trilling was on sabbatical leave to CERN in 1973–74, where he worked on the study of the properties of charm particles, their decay modes and excited states. He was also director of the Physics Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 1984 until 1987. Trilling was a principal proponent of the Superconducting Super Collider project and spokesperson for the Solenoidal Detector Collaboration. After the SSC was cancelled in 1993, Trilling transitioned most of the SDC team to collaborate on the ATLAS experiment at the LHC, which led to the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012. Trilling was elected vice-president of the American Physical Society, beginning his term on 1 January 1999, and was president of the society in 2001.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brad Cox (physicist)</span> American physicist

Bradley Cox is an American physicist, academic and researcher. He is a Professor of Physics and the founder of the High Energy Physics Group at the University of Virginia.

Martin Breidenbach is an American professor of particle physics and astrophysics, emeritus, at Stanford University. His research interests have included e+e- colliding beam physics, detector optimization, and electromagnetic calorimeters.

David M. Strom is an experimental high energy particle physicist on the faculty of the University of Oregon.

References

  1. ↑ "Liberty Shrine Presented to Lincoln High". The News Tribune. 1964-11-11. p. 16. Retrieved 2024-09-17.
  2. ↑ "'Frontiers' of Mind, Spirit and Heart Yet to Be Conquered, 1965 Lincoln Graduates Told". The News Tribune. 1965-06-15. p. 4. Retrieved 2024-09-17.
  3. ↑ "13 Tacomas on List for Academies". The News Tribune. 1964-12-31. p. 3. Retrieved 2024-09-16.
  4. ↑ "8 Appointed to Academies". The News Tribune. 1965-06-28. p. 4. Retrieved 2024-09-16.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 "Curriculum vitae, James E. Brau" (PDF). University of Oregon. 2016. Archived (PDF) from the original on April 19, 2023. Retrieved March 31, 2016.
  6. 1 2 3 "2016 Fellows Summer Workshop". www.hertzfoundation.org. Archived from the original on August 29, 2017. Retrieved May 7, 2016.
  7. ↑ "James Brau". hertzfoundation.org. Archived from the original on April 23, 2023. Retrieved 2017-08-20.
  8. ↑ Brau, J.E.; Butler, J.; Bugg, W.M.; Carroll, J.T.; Cautis, C.V.; Cohn, H.O.; Condo, G.; Dado, S.; Davenport, F.; Diamond, R.; Erickson, R.; Ferguson, M.; Field, R.C.; Fortney, L.R.; Franek, B.; Gearhart, R.; Glanzman, T.; Goldberg, J.; Goshaw, A.T.; Hagopian, V.; Handler, T.; Hargis, H.J.; Hart, E.; Huang, D.Q.; Kelsey, D.P.; Lannutti, J.; Lucas, P.W.; Moffeit, K.C.; Maruyama, T.; Palounek, A.P.T.; Parker, D.B.; Rafatian, A.; Robertson, W.J.; Rogers, A.H.; Sugahara, R.; Takahashi, K.; Tether, S.; Walker, W.D.; Yamaguchi, A.; Yamamoto, R.K. (May 1982). "The lead glass columns: A large shower detector at the SLAC hybrid facility". Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research. 196 (2–3): 403–413. Bibcode:1982NIMPR.196..403B. doi:10.1016/0029-554X(82)90105-7. OSTI   1446127. Archived from the original on September 17, 2024. Retrieved September 17, 2024.
  9. ↑ Brau, J.; Hargis, H. J.; Gabriel, T. A.; Bishop, B. L. (January 1, 1985). "Monte Carlo Studies of Uranium Calorimetry". Nucl. Instrum. Methods A. 238 (2–3): 489–495. Bibcode:1985NIMPA.238..489B. doi:10.1016/0168-9002(85)90490-5. Archived from the original on September 17, 2024.
  10. 1 2 "2011 Research Innovation Awards - Discovery and Connection". University of Oregon. June 2011. Archived from the original on January 17, 2013. Retrieved April 9, 2016.
  11. ↑ Berridge, S. C.; Brau, J. E.; Bugg, W. M.; Frey, R.; Furuno, K.; Gioumousis, A.; Haller, G.; Huber, Jennifer S.; Hwang, H. (January 1, 1992). "First results from the SLD silicon calorimeters". IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. 39 (5): 1242–1248. Bibcode:1992ITNS...39.1242B. doi:10.1109/23.173184. S2CID   12582455. Archived from the original on March 5, 2017.
  12. ↑ Abe, K.; Arodzero, A.; Baltay, C.; Brau, J. E.; Breidenbach, M.; Burrows, P. N.; Chou, Aaron S.; Crawford, G.; Damerell, C. J. S. (January 1, 1997). "Design and performance of the SLD vertex detector, a 307 Mpixel tracking system". Nucl. Instrum. Methods A. 400 (2–3): 287–343. Bibcode:1997NIMPA.400..287A. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.432.6540 . doi:10.1016/S0168-9002(97)01011-5. Archived from the original on March 5, 2017.
  13. ↑ "Center for High Energy Physics". pages.uoregon.edu. Archived from the original on March 5, 2017. Retrieved 2016-07-19.
  14. ↑ LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration (2016-02-11). "Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger". Physical Review Letters. 116 (6): 061102. arXiv: 1602.03837 . Bibcode:2016PhRvL.116f1102A. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102. PMID   26918975. S2CID   119286014. Archived from the original on Jun 21, 2017.
  15. ↑ "UO physicists to seek dark matter particles when collider resumes - Around the O". around.uoregon.edu. 2015-04-14. Archived from the original on September 18, 2024. Retrieved April 1, 2016.
  16. ↑ Aad, G.; et al. (21 December 2012). "A Particle Consistent with the Higgs Boson Observed with the ATLAS Detector at the Large Hadron Collider" (PDF). Science. 338 (6114): 1576–1582. Bibcode:2012Sci...338.1576Q. doi: 10.1126/science.1232005 . hdl: 11376/1489 . PMID   23258888. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 5, 2024. Retrieved February 5, 2024.
  17. 1 2 "International Organizing Committee". uoregon.edu. Archived from the original on May 27, 2014. Retrieved May 7, 2016.
  18. ↑ "Jim Brau - LC NewsLine". newsline.linearcollider.org. Archived from the original on September 8, 2015. Retrieved May 7, 2016.
  19. ↑ "Press statement LCWS2016, LC NewsLine". Newsline, the Newsletter of the Linear Collider Community. Linear Collider Collaboration. December 8, 2016. Archived from the original on November 9, 2019. Retrieved December 16, 2016.
  20. ↑ "Hertz Foundation Fellows". hertzfoundation.org. Archived from the original on March 5, 2017. Retrieved May 5, 2016.
  21. ↑ "APS Fellow Archive". www.aps.org. Archived from the original on December 18, 2022. Retrieved May 7, 2016.
  22. ↑ "Brau, DeRose and Tyler elected AAAS fellows". uonews.uoregon.edu. December 7, 2009. Archived from the original on June 14, 2010. Retrieved May 6, 2016.
  23. ↑ "Elected Fellows - AAAS". membercentral.aaas.org. American Association for the Advancement of Science. 2009. Retrieved May 7, 2016.
  24. ↑ "Inaugural Presidential Research Lecture will explore the Higgs boson". University of Oregon. 2012. Archived from the original on April 19, 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.