TAC-HEP is a multi-institutional (Princeton, UMass and UW-Madison) program in Computational High Energy Physics under the direction of Professor Tulika Bose (PI). Professors Keith Bechtol, Kevin Black, Kyle Cranmer, Sridhara Dasu and Brian Rebel are the other UW-Madison co-PIs.
The goal of this US Department of Energy, Office of Science, supported program is to train scientists and engineers, in collaboration with its National Laboratories (FNAL, BNL, SLAC, …), to develop advanced software and computing systems to advance HEP. Development and design of coherent hardware and software systems, collaborative software infrastructure, and high-performance software and algorithms are skills required across multiple disciplines supported by HEP. The trainees will eventually find employment in the DOE National Laboratory or universities.
Four TAC-HEP two-year positions are available to UW physics graduate students, who are US citizens or permanent residents (as required by DOE guidelines). The students can work with any of the above faculty in one of the three major areas: Hardware-Software co-design, Collaborative Software Infrastructure, High Performance Software and Algorithms. The stipend and benefits provided by this traineeship will be the same as that of a Physics RA or TA appointment. After the traineeship, it is anticipated that the students continue on to regular RA position with the faculty member to complete their thesis research in HEP.
The students are expected to be in good standing while making progress towards their PhD degree, including completion of qualifying examination and most core courses. Typically students starting in second or third year of their graduate study are suitable for beginning this traineeship. The students may take computer science and/or electrical engineering courses to build foundational knowledge in relevant computational areas and/or complete dedicated training modules developed by the collaborating faculty and their research groups, and complete an R&D project, which will be part of the student’s PhD effort. The course work associated with this program will serve as the minor requirement.
Additional information regarding the computational course work, training modules and the research project is available here.
Interested students should send a 1-2 paragraph email to tac-hep-faculty@hep.wisc.edu describing their interest in the program and indicating the research project and faculty member of choice. Students are also welcome to contact any of the TAC-HEP faculty for a chat.