Two minutes

A postdoctoral researcher working at the world's biggest science experiment

Ulysses Grundler is wrapping up his first year as a postdoctoral research associate for Iowa State's department of physics and astronomy. Taking the job meant moving his family (wife Deirdre and their sons Xavier, 4, and Ezekiel, 3) to France, just across the border from Geneva, Switzerland. Grundler is doing physics at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (also known as CERN) and its Large Hadron Collider.

Science headlines: The Large Hadron Collider is a $9 billion machine that will accelerate beams of protons or lead ions to nearly the speed of light and crash them together. One result could be the discovery of the Higgs boson, which could explain why subatomic particles have mass. The collider made international news on Sept. 10, 2008, when it sent its first beam of protons racing around 17 miles of underground tunnel. But breakdowns in the machine's high-current superconducting electrical connections forced a complete shutdown nine days later. After extensive repairs, the collider is scheduled to be restarted in November.

ISU at the LHC: Grundler is a part of an Iowa State team working on the pixel detector, the innermost component of the Large Hadron Collider's ATLAS detector. ATLAS is one of two general purpose detectors at the collider. It will measure the paths, energies and identities of the particles created when protons or lead ions collide at unprecedented energies. The pixel detector uses 80 million pixels to make precision measurements as close to the particle collisions as possible.

Grundler's to-do list: "We're continuing to try and be as prepared as possible for when data starts coming -- adjusting things as needed for the new conditions we expect to be running under," Grundler said. "For my part, I'm working on an analysis searching for the Higgs boson -- in particular, I am attempting to estimate the top quark background to that signal. I am also working on simulations to study the effects of beam lost into the detector in order to protect the pixel detector."

Learn more about the Higgs Boson and the top quark.

-- Mike Krapfl