Janet Conrad

Last updated
Janet Marie Conrad
Born (1963-10-23) October 23, 1963 (age 60)
Wooster, Ohio
Education Swarthmore College (B.A. 1985)
Oxford University (M.Sc., 1987)
Harvard University (Ph.D., 1993)
Awards Guggenheim Fellow
Sloan Research Fellow
Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award
Scientific career
FieldsExperimental Particle Physics
Institutions Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Columbia University
Fermilab

Janet Marie Conrad (born 1963) is an American experimental physicist, researcher, and professor at MIT studying elementary particle physics. Her work focuses on neutrino properties and the techniques for studying them. In recognition of her efforts, Conrad has been the recipient of several highly prestigious awards during her career, including an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and the American Physical Society Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award.

Contents

Education

Conrad obtained a physics B.A. from Swarthmore College in 1985. She then went to Oxford University to complete a M.Sc. in High Energy Physics as a member of the European Muon Collaboration in 1987 then to Harvard University to complete a PhD in High Energy Physics in 1993. [1]

Career

Following Conrad's sophomore year at Swarthmore, she spent her summer in Cambridge, Massachusetts working with Francis Pipkin at Harvard, at her uncle's suggestion. [2] The following summer, Conrad worked with him at Fermilab. [2]

After graduating from Harvard in 1993, Conrad took a position as a postdoctoral research associate at the Nevis Laboratories, operated by Columbia University. In 1995, she joined Columbia's physics department as an assistant professor. In 1996 she was awarded the DOE Outstanding Junior Investigator Award for a study entitled Construction of a Decay Channel for the NuTeV Experiment at Fermilab . [3] She gained tenure at Columbia in 1999. In 2002, she was nominated by the American Physical Society's Division of Particles and Fields for fellowship with the APS, citing "her leadership in experimental neutrino physics, particularly for initiating and leading the NuTeV decay channel experiment and the Mini-BooNe neutrino oscillations experiment". [4] From 2005 until 2008, Conrad was a Columbia Distinguished Faculty Fellow, and was promoted to the endowed position of Walter O. Lecroy Professor in 2006. [1] In 2008, Conrad left Columbia to join MIT's physics department as a professor. [1]

Conrad is a member of several physics collaborations, including MicroBooNE, DAEδALUS, Short-Baseline Near Detector (SBND), and IceCube. She was previously a member of Double Chooz (2006-2014), SciBooNE (2005-2011), MiniBooNE (1997-2014), CCFR/NuTeV (1993-2001), E665 (1984-1996), and EMC (1985-1986). [1]

In addition, she has acted as a spokesperson for IsoDAR/DAEdALUS [5] and MiniBooNE, [1] of which she was a founding member. [6]

Other

In 2012, Conrad took part in a panel with the World Science Festival, speaking to the public about neutrinos [7] .

Inspired by detector development efforts while working on IceCube [8] , Conrad took part in the development of a low-cost tabletop muon detector [9] .

In 2015, Conrad and fellow MIT professor Lindley Winslow were consulted as experts in the culture and science of physics for the 2016 film Ghostbusters [10] . [11]

Personal life

Janet Conrad was born October 23, 1963, in Wooster, Ohio. [1] She was a member of 4-H as a child in Ohio. [2]

Conrad is the niece of chemistry Nobel Laureate William Lipscomb. [2]

Conrad is married to fellow physicist Vassili Papavassiliou, [2] a professor at New Mexico State University [12]

Honors and awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fermilab</span> High-energy particle physics laboratory in Illinois, US

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located in Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics. Since 2007, Fermilab has been operated by the Fermi Research Alliance (FRA), a joint venture of the University of Chicago, and the Universities Research Association (URA); although in 2023, the Department of Energy (DOE) opened bidding for a new contractor due to concerns about the FRA performance. Fermilab is a part of the Illinois Technology and Research Corridor.

Sterile neutrinos are hypothetical particles that interact only via gravity and not via any of the other fundamental interactions of the Standard Model. The term sterile neutrino is used to distinguish them from the known, ordinary active neutrinos in the Standard Model, which carry an isospin charge of ±+1/ 2  and engage in the weak interaction. The term typically refers to neutrinos with right-handed chirality, which may be inserted into the Standard Model. Particles that possess the quantum numbers of sterile neutrinos and masses great enough such that they do not interfere with the current theory of Big Bang nucleosynthesis are often called neutral heavy leptons (NHLs) or heavy neutral leptons (HNLs).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MiniBooNE</span> Neutrino physics experiment

MiniBooNE is a Cherenkov detector experiment at Fermilab designed to observe neutrino oscillations. A neutrino beam consisting primarily of muon neutrinos is directed at a detector filled with 800 tons of mineral oil and lined with 1,280 photomultiplier tubes. An excess of electron neutrino events in the detector would support the neutrino oscillation interpretation of the LSND result.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NOvA</span> Observatory

The NOνA experiment is a particle physics experiment designed to detect neutrinos in Fermilab's NuMI beam. Intended to be the successor to MINOS, NOνA consists of two detectors, one at Fermilab, and one in northern Minnesota. Neutrinos from NuMI pass through 810 km of Earth to reach the far detector. NOνA's main goal is to observe the oscillation of muon neutrinos to electron neutrinos. The primary physics goals of NOvA are:

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

SciBar Booster Neutrino Experiment (SciBooNE), was a neutrino experiment located at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in the USA. It observed neutrinos of the Fermilab Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) that are produced when protons from the Fermilab Booster-accelerator were made to hit a beryllium target; this led to the production of many short-lived particles that decayed into neutrinos. The SciBooNE detector was located some 100 meters downrange from the beryllium target, with a 50 meter decay-volume (where the particle decay into neutrinos) and absorber combined with 50 meters of solid ground between the target and the detector to absorb other particles than neutrinos. The neutrino-beam continued through SciBooNE and ground to the MiniBooNE-detector, located some 540 meters downrange from the target.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antonio Ereditato</span> Italian physicist

Antonio Ereditato is an Italian physicist, currently Research Professor at the University of Chicago, associate researcher at Fermilab, Batavia, USA, and Emeritus professor at the University of Bern, Switzerland, where he has been Director of the Laboratory for High Energy Physics from 2006 to 2020. From 2021 to 2022 Ereditato has been Visiting Professor at the Yale University, USA. He carried out research activities in the field of experimental neutrino physics, of weak interactions and strong interactions with experiments conducted at CERN, in Japan, at Fermilab in United States and at the LNGS in Italy. Ereditato has accomplished several R&D studies on particle detectors: wire chambers, calorimeters, time projection chambers, nuclear emulsions, detectors for medical applications.

The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a neutrino experiment under construction, with a near detector at Fermilab and a far detector at the Sanford Underground Research Facility that will observe neutrinos produced at Fermilab. An intense beam of trillions of neutrinos from the production facility at Fermilab will be sent over a distance of 1,300 kilometers (810 mi) with the goal of understanding the role of neutrinos in the universe. More than 1,000 collaborators work on the project. The experiment is designed for a 20-year period of data collection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Accelerator Neutrino Neutron Interaction Experiment</span> Water Cherenkov detector experiment

The Accelerator Neutrino Neutron Interaction Experiment (ANNIE) is a proposed water Cherenkov detector experiment designed to examine the nature of neutrino interactions. This experiment will study phenomena like proton decay, and neutrino oscillations, by analyzing neutrino interactions in gadolinium-loaded water and measuring their neutron yield. Neutron Tagging plays an important role in background rejection from atmospheric neutrinos. By implementing early prototypes of LAPPDs, high precision timing is possible. The suggested location for ANNIE is the SciBooNE hall on the Booster Neutrino Beam associated with the MiniBooNE experiment. The neutrino beam originates in Fermilab where The Booster delivers 8 GeV protons to a beryllium target producing secondary pions and kaons. These secondary mesons decay to produce a neutrino beam with an average energy of around 800 MeV. ANNIE will begin installation in the summer of 2015. Phase I of ANNIE, mapping the neutron background, completed in 2017. The detector is being upgraded for full science operation which is expected to begin late 2018.

MicroBooNE is a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. It is located in the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) beamline where neutrinos are produced by colliding protons from Fermilab's booster-accelerator on a beryllium target; this produces many short-lived particles that decay into neutrinos. The neutrinos pass through solid ground, through another experiment called ANNIE, then solid ground, then through the Short Baseline Near Detector, then ground again before it arrives at the MicroBooNE detector 470 meters downrange from the target. After MicroBooNE the neutrinos continue to the MiniBooNE detector and to the ICARUS detector. MicroBooNE is also exposed to the neutrino beam from the Main Injector (NuMI) which enter the detector at a different angle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mayly Sánchez</span> Venezuelan scientist

Mayly Sánchez is a Venezuelan-born particle physicist who researches at Iowa State University. In 2011, she was awarded the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor given by the United States to scientists who are in the early stages of their research careers, for her contributions to the study of neutrinos and her work in promoting STEM fields to women. In 2013, she was named by the BBC as one of the top ten women scientists in Latin America.

Eugene William Beier is an American physicist.

Karsten M. Heeger is a German–American physicist and Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics at Yale University, where he also serves as both chair of the Yale Department of Physics and director of Wright Laboratory. His work is primarily in the area of neutrino physics, focusing on the study of neutrino oscillations, neutrino mass, and dark matter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Herman Brenner White</span> American physicist (born 1948)

Herman Brenner White is an American physicist who works at Fermilab. He won the 2010 American Physical Society Edward A Bouchet Award.

An accelerator neutrino is a human-generated neutrino or antineutrino obtained using particle accelerators, in which beam of protons is accelerated and collided with a fixed target, producing mesons which then decay into neutrinos. Depending on the energy of the accelerated protons and whether mesons decay in flight or at rest it is possible to generate neutrinos of a different flavour, energy and angular distribution. Accelerator neutrinos are used to study neutrino interactions and neutrino oscillations taking advantage of high intensity of neutrino beams, as well as a possibility to control and understand their type and kinematic properties to a much greater extent than for neutrinos from other sources.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jocelyn Monroe</span> American experimental particle physicist

Jocelyn Monroe is an American British experimental particle physicist who is a professor at the University of Oxford. Her research considers the development of novel detectors as part of the search for dark matter. In 2016 she was honoured with the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for her work on the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bonnie Fleming</span> American physicist

Bonnie T. Fleming is an experimental particle physicist who has held leadership roles in several physics experiments and at Fermilab. Since 2022, she has been Fermilab's chief research officer and deputy director for science and technology. She has also served on the faculty of Yale University and the University of Chicago. Fleming is an expert in neutrino physics and liquid argon time projection chamber detector technology.

Geralyn P. (Sam) Zeller is an American neutrino physicist at Fermilab. At Fermilab, she is a participant in the MiniBooNE experiment, co-spokesperson for the MicroBooNE experiment, and deputy head of the Neutrino Division.

Alice Louise Bean is an American physicist whose research concerns particle physics, and particularly particles beyond those predicted from the standard model of particle physics. She is a distinguished professor of physics at the University of Kansas.

Lindley Winslow is an experimental nuclear and particle physicist, and associate professor at MIT.

Donna Lynne Naples is an American neutrino physicist whose research involves both the use of particle accelerators to generate neutrino beams, and the use of underground neutrino detectors to study cosmic neutrinos and neutrino oscillation. She is a professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 "cv2016.pdf" (PDF). MIT. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "Fun With Physics". The New Yorker. 2 June 2003. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
  3. 1 2 "DOE OUTSTANDING JUNIOR INVESTIGATOR PROGRAM AWARDEES" (PDF). DOE Office of Science. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
  4. 1 2 "APS Fellow Archive". American Physical Society. Retrieved 27 April 2018.
  5. ↑ "Janet Conrad". Plasma Science and Fusion Center. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
  6. 1 2 "Janet Conrad". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
  7. ↑ "What Do Neutrino Oscillations Tell Us?". YouTube. World Science Festival. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
  8. ↑ "CosmicWatch" . Retrieved 26 April 2018.
  9. ↑ "The $100 muon detector". 19 August 2016. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
  10. ↑ "Ghostbusters: Yes, the Equations are Correct". Sloan Science and Film.
  11. ↑ "The MIT Physicists Who Infused Ghostbusters With Real Science". Wired. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
  12. ↑ "Vassili Papavassiliou". New Mexico State University. Archived from the original on 18 October 2018. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
  13. ↑ "tmp139.DOC - Keasbey Memorial Fdn Directory of Scholars.pdf" (PDF). Keasbey Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
  14. ↑ "Janet Conrad". The Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers: Recipient Details. National Science Foundation. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
  15. ↑ "Past Fellows". Archived from the original on 14 March 2018. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
  16. ↑ "2001 Maria Goeppert Mayer Award Recipient". American Physical Society. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
  17. ↑ "Columbia Sweeps Mayor's Awards in Science and Technology; Giuliani Will Honor Six Faculty or Alumni on March 6". Columbia News. 2 Mar 2001. Retrieved 27 April 2018.
  18. ↑ "Conrad, Doyle named Guggenheim fellows". MIT News. 8 April 2009. Retrieved 27 April 2018.
  19. ↑ "Crafting smaller-scale particle accelerators to better probe the nature of reality". On The Beam - Bose Fellows. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
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.