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Book cover of “Bad Girls: Young Women, Sex, and Rebellion before the Sixties” by Amanda H. LittauerIn her new book, NIU professor Amanda Littauer tells the history of young women who stood at the center of major cultural change and helped transform a society bound by conservative sexual morality into one more open to individualism, plurality and pleasure in modern sexual life.

Littauer will deliver a talk on the book – titled “Bad Girls: Young Women, Sex, and Rebellion before the Sixties” – at 2 p.m. Friday, Sept. 18, in the Thurgood Marshall Gallery if Swen Parson Hall. Littauer holds a joint appointment with the Department of History and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality.

Building on a new generation of research on postwar American society, the book traces the origins of the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s. It shows that sexual liberation was much more than a reaction to 1950s repression because it largely involved the mainstreaming of a counterculture already on the rise among girls and young women decades earlier.

From World War II-era “victory girls” to teen lesbians in the 1940s and 1950s, these nonconforming women and girls navigated and resisted intense social and interpersonal pressures to fit existing mores, using the upheavals of the era to pursue new sexual freedoms.

For more information on the talk, contact history professor Aaron Fogleman at aaronfogleman@niu.edu.

Date posted: September 1, 2015 | Author: | Comments Off on Bad Girls, Bad Girls

Categories: Communiversity Digital Signage Events Faculty & Staff Humanities Liberal Arts and Sciences On Campus Research

Keith TaddeiNIU physics student Keith Taddei received an award for best student lecture at the American Crystallographic Association Conference, held July 25 to July 29 in Philadelphia.

Taddei’s lecture titled, “Observation of the Magnetic C4 Phase and a Two Q Magnetic Structure in Hole doped Sr1-xNaxFe2As2,” was given as part of the Crystallography of Emergent Phenomena session.

“Keith reported our recent finding of an extremely rare double-Q magnetic structure in Sr1‑xNaxFe2As2 superconductors,” physics professor Omar Chmaissem said.

“A combination of neutron scattering, Mossbauer measurements in collaboration with physics professor Dennis E. Brown and group theoretical representation analysis led to establishing the full phase diagram of these materials and in delineating the regions of competition and coexistence of diverse magnetic phases with superconductivity,” Chmaissem added.

“Our results helped reignite interest in the theory of these exotic superconductors and provided important new information that brings us closer to understanding their exact nature from the electronic and structural point of view.”

Taddei is a fourth-year graduate student from Burbank and is a recent recipient of an NIU Dissertation Completion Award Fellowship. In addition to several previous and pending publications, he hopes to publish his final results on the behavior of magnetic phases in iron-based superconductors in a professional journal later this year.

This research was conducted in collaboration with scientists from Argonne National Laboratory.

Date posted: August 3, 2015 | Author: | Comments Off on Physics student Keith Taddei receives top award for student lecture

Categories: Campus Highlights Did You Know? Faculty & Staff Liberal Arts and Sciences Research Science and Technology Students

David Kyvig

David Kyvig

NIU Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus David Edward Kyvig, a noted Constitutional historian and specialist on recent America, whose 1996 book “Explicit and Authentic Acts: Amending the U.S. Constitution, 1776-1995” was awarded the Bancroft Prize and the Henry Adams Prize, died on Monday, June 22, at George Washington University Hospital after a lifelong battle with diabetes. He was 71.

Kyvig was known for his meticulous scholarship. His “Explicit and Authentic Acts” is a modern classic. Scholarly acclaim was almost universal for the book that instructed us in the ways in which Americans make fundamental changes in the document that is the basis of our self-governance.

In his 2008 book, “The Age of Impeachment, American Constitutional Culture since 1960,”Kyvig offered a rich, comprehensive study of how and why this once little-used provision was reborn as a popular instrument of political assault, heralding the toxic, highly partisan politics of the present.

In addition to political history, Kyvig was committed to the history of ordinary Americans and their places.

With his dear friend and long-time collaborator Myron “Mike” Marty, Kyvig co-authored “Nearby History: Exploring the Past Around You (1982), which was published by the American Association of State and Local History and recipient of the 1983 Ohio Association of Historical Societies and Museums Individual Achievement Award. The volume became a virtual handbook for public historians.

Turning from places to popular culture, Kyvig wrote “Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1939: Decades of Promise and Pain” (2002), later published in an acclaimed second edition, “Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1940: How Americans Lived Through the ‘Roaring Twenties’ and the Great Depression.

Kyvig was born March 8, 1944, in Ames, Iowa. He and his brother John C. Kyvig (1949-1977) were raised in Muskegon, Mich., by their parents, Wilma C. (Jessen) and Edward H. Kyvig.

Book cover of “Explicit and Authentic Acts: Amending the U.S. Constitution, 1776-1995”Kyvig discovered his love for history at Kalamazoo College, where he earned a B.A. cum laude in 1966. In 1971, he completed a Ph.D. in American History from Northwestern University, which became the basis for his first book, “Repealing National Prohibition” (1979). He served at the National Archives as an archivist in the Office of Presidential Libraries from 1970 to 1971.

Joining the faculty of the University of Akron in 1971, Kyvig achieved emeritus status there in 1999 before moving to Northern Illinois University. He taught for 11 more years at NIU and retired a second time, as he used to say, in 2010.

Among his many distinctions, Kyvig was a Fulbright Professor of American Civilization at the University of Tromsø, Norway (1987-1988); a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2004-2005); and a recipient of fellowships from the Newberry Library (1979), American Council of Learned Societies (1980-1981, 2004-2005), and National Endowment for the Humanities (2005-2006).

Kyvig happily retired to Capitol Hill in 2010, where he pursued his own scholarship from his beloved desk at the Library of Congress. At the time of his death, he had no fewer than four academic projects in the works, among them a cutting-edge volume on political representation tentatively titled, “Sizing Up Congress: James Madison’s Unfulfilled Legacy.”

David Kyivg is survived by his beloved wife, NIU Distinguished Research Professor Emerita Christine Worobec; his daughters, Jennifer Kyvig Kasper and Elizabeth Kyvig; grandchildren, Noah and Grace Kasper; son-in-law, Eric Kasper; former wife, Barbara Burness Kyvig; and countless friends and professional colleagues.

Kyvig was a principled optimist who relished healthy debate. He was the consummate storyteller who put historical facts in contemporary context – whether in a classroom, over a long lunch with friends, or in passing conversation with merchants at D.C.’s Eastern Market. And, throughout his life, he was an avid fan of baseball, a passion that he shared with his grandson. Most recently, he cheered for the Washington Nationals from his regular seat on the third base line.

Date posted: July 28, 2015 | Author: | Comments Off on NIU remembers prolific historian David Kyvig

Categories: Faculty & Staff Humanities Latest News Liberal Arts and Sciences

Brian W. Caputo

Brian W. Caputo

The Board of Trustees of the Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF) has announced the appointment of NIU alumnus Brian W. Caputo, chief financial officer and city treasurer of the City of Aurora, to the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB).

Caputo holds two NIU degrees: a master of public administration degree and a Ph.D. in political science with fields of study in public administration, public policy and government finance.

He also serves as an adjunct faculty member in public administration.

The GASB is the independent, private-sector organization that sets accounting and financial reporting standards for state and local governments in the United States. The FAF is the independent, private-sector organization responsible for the oversight of the GASB and its sister standard setter, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).

Caputo’s term commences July 1 and will extend through June 30, 2019. He will be eligible for reappointment to an additional term of five years at that time.

“The Board of Trustees is pleased to welcome Brian to the GASB,” FAF Chairman Jeffrey J. Diermeier said. “His experience and perspective as a preparer of government financial statements will add significant value to the board as it addresses a wide range of key issues going forward.”

“Brian is a dynamic individual whose expertise and insights will serve the board well on the many important issues currently before us,” said David A. Vaudt, GASB chairman, “including the next phase of outreach and educational activities on pensions and other postemployment benefits.”

Aurora: City of LightsServing the City of Aurora since 1998, Caputo is responsible for developing and overseeing the execution of the city’s $400 million annual budget, preparing the comprehensive annual financial report, and managing annual investment of public funds averaging $500 million.

Previously, as director of finance and treasurer of the Village of Mount Prospect, he was responsible for all aspects of the village’s financial management. Prior to that, Caputo served as assistant finance director for the Village of LaGrange.

He served in the U.S. Army from 1982 to 1988 and attained the rank of captain. Caputo then served in the U.S. Army Reserve from 1988 to 2004 and retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

In addition to his NIU degree, Caputo holds a bachelor’s degree from the United States Military Academy and a master’s degree in accountancy from De Paul University. He is a certified public accountant and a certified public finance officer.

Date posted: June 15, 2015 | Author: | Comments Off on Alumnus Brian Caputo appointed to Governmental Accounting Standards Board

Categories: Alumni

The NIU community is mourning the loss of two prominent retired faculty members, each of whom left an indelible mark on the university.

Rodney Angotti, former chair of computer science, died June 6, in DeKalb. Clyde Kimball, a distinguished research professor of physics, died June 3, in Corvallis, Ore.

“Rod and Clyde were powerful forces, both within NIU and in the communities that NIU is part of,” said Christopher McCord, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “Both cared deeply for the institution, and both did much to advance it during their careers here. It was my privilege and pleasure to know them, and to recognize them during the college’s 50th anniversary, as two of the first 10 faculty and staff to receive the college’s Distinguished Faculty and Staff Award.”

Rodney Angotti

Rodney Angotti

Known for intellectual clarity, compassion, commitment to principle and a passion for excellence, Angotti’s impact on NIU can still be felt today.

Angotti joined the NIU faculty in 1967 as a member of the department of mathematics. He served as the department’s assistant chair from 1968 to 1971 and played a key role in establishing computer science as one of the emphases available to mathematics majors.

He later served as assistant dean in Liberal Arts and Sciences from 1971 to 1983, providing leadership during a turbulent time of student unrest and rapidly expanding curricular initiatives. Those initiatives included establishing a student advising office and development of the contract major and the Bachelor of General Studies degree.

Angotti was a tireless advocate for students selecting coursework outside of their primary degree program to enhance and enrich their degree. Nearly all of the interdisciplinary minors that exist in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences today bear the Angotti stamp.

In 1983, he became chair of NIU’s Department of Computer Science, where he reached out to the business world, bringing dollars to support faculty, students, the curriculum and laboratories. Over the course of nearly a quarter century, he guided computer science from a fledging department into one of the most dynamic and productive units in the college. He retired in 2006.

Services will be held today (June 10) at 10:30 a.m. at the Newman Center in DeKalb. In lieu of flowers, the family will establish a scholarship fund in the name of Rodney Angotti that will be used for an aspiring computer science student attending NIU.

Kimball, a distinguished research professor whose scholarship attracted tens of millions of dollars in external funding to NIU, co-founded the university’s Institute for Nano Science, Engineering, and Technology (InSET) and served as its first director.

Clyde Kimball

Clyde Kimball

Kimball joined the NIU Department of Physics in the fall of 1964 while continuing professional appointments at Argonne National Laboratory.

Over the years, he taught almost all departmental undergraduate and graduate courses, formally supervising more than 30 research students. He supported hundreds more from his research grants. His work also resulted in nearly 300 scholarly publications.

Despite retiring in 2000, Kimball remained active on campus, where he helped spearhead an NIU high-performance computing initiative and continued his research up until recent years.

Beyond his teaching and research, Kimball during his NIU career conceived numerous initiatives and partnerships with Argonne and developed inter- and intra-college collaborations. He also served as science adviser to the president of NIU and worked twice as a program director at the National Science Foundation, providing vital guidance at the national level while building important recognition for NIU.

Despite an extraordinarily busy schedule, Kimball was known for always making time for others—exhibiting collegiality, taking personal interest in the work of others, lending a helping hand to students and dedicating constructive attention to new faculty.

“Clyde was not only an exceptional scientist, he was an extraordinary person,” said friend and former colleague Cara Carlson, now a business administrative associate with Northern Illinois University Press. “His goal was to make NIU a leading scientific institution – he truly loved working at the university and cherished the friends he made while on his journey.”

Carlson said Kimball’s family is planning a service this fall in DeKalb to celebrate his life and accomplishments.

Date posted: June 10, 2015 | Author: | Comments Off on Two faculty members who helped make NIU great

Categories: Latest News Liberal Arts and Sciences

Photo of the flag of GermanyHeinz Osterle, professor emeritus of German foreign languages and literatures at NIU, died Monday, May 4. He was 82.

“Heinz was a well-liked teacher and a special mentor to everybody in German, always very supportive,” said Katharina Barbe, chair of the NIU Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. “He and his wife Dale were also very active in the community and university.”

Born in Ulm, Germany, Osterle attended the universities of Tubingen, Frieburg and Munich, where he received a Master of Arts degree. After a successful Fulbright fellowship at Brown University, he earned his Ph.D. there in German literature.

He began his teaching career at the George Washington University in 1960. He taught at New York and Yale universities before coming to NIU in 1972.

In his 38-year academic career, he edited and co-authored four books, presented 25 papers at professional meetings, published 29 peer-reviewed articles and 37 critiques and book reviews, and supervised many doctoral candidates.

Osterle is survived by his wife of 55 years, two of their three children, six grandchildren, and one of his two brothers (Germany) and their children.

Funeral arrangements are entrusted to the Beverage Family Funeral Home, 104 Terry St., Sandwich.

Date posted: May 13, 2015 | Author: | Comments Off on NIU remembers Heinz Osterle

Categories: Campus Highlights Global Liberal Arts and Sciences

Jaime Schumacher

Jaime Schumacher

Jaime Schumacher, the University Libraries’ new director of scholarly communications, will join leaders in the field of digital preservation in Washington, D.C., next month to tackle the complex challenge of preserving email.

The Library of Congress and the National Archives and Records Administration will co-host an event to bring together representatives of various federal agencies, academic and research libraries and funding agencies, as well as curators, technologists, archivists and records managers working on collecting and preserving email.

Schumacher has been invited to speak on the struggle of smaller institutions, including local cultural heritage organizations, which are attempting to archive and preserve email correspondence. Those efforts have proven challenging for even the most technically savvy, well-funded organizations.

Following the event, Schumacher will join a select group of professionals who will create recommendations and base-line use cases that will be released as a guide for system providers, professionals in the field and organizations looking to move the email-archiving solution set forward.

The continued work by Schumacher and NIU co-principal investigators Lynne Thomas and Drew VandeCreek on the highly successful Digital POWRR project has brought NIU to forefront of institutions leading the digital preservation movement.

Date posted: May 8, 2015 | Author: | Comments Off on NIU’s Jaime Schumacher helping to create national guide for archiving email

Categories: Campus Highlights

Nigel Lockyer

Nigel Lockyer

NIU will award an honorary doctoral degree Friday, May 8, to acclaimed physicist Nigel Lockyer, director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

Lockyer will earn his honorary doctorate during the NIU Graduate School commencement ceremony scheduled for 6:30 p.m. at the NIU Convocation Center.

“Fermilab is America’s premier laboratory for particle physics research,” said NIU President Doug Baker, who serves as chair of the board of the Illinois Science & Technology Coalition. “Dr. Lockyer has been a very strong partner with NIU as we work together to build Illinois’ capacity for educating and training the next generation of accelerator physicists.”

Earlier this spring, Lockyer was on campus to participate in a roundtable discussion with President Baker, NIU students and faculty and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Durbin has introduced legislation to provide greater federal investment in scientific research and create a mandatory fund to provide steady, predictable funding for breakthrough research at America’s top research agencies.

For more than a quarter century, NIU physicists and students have conducted cutting-edge research at the Fermilab and participated in many of its most high profile experiments.

“Over the years, NIU and Fermilab have closely collaborated on fundamental particle physics and accelerator and technology development,” said physicist Gerald Blazey, acting associate vice president for research and innovation at NIU and a former co-spokesperson for Fermilab’s international DZero collaboration.

“Dr. Lockyer has continued the tradition, and we look forward to working with him to further strengthen university and laboratory ties,” Blazey said.

An experimental particle physicist, Lockyer began his tenure as director of Fermilab in September 2013.

Fermilab logoPrior to that he served as director of TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics. He was also a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of British Columbia.

Under his leadership, TRIUMF formulated a vision for ascending the world stage in nuclear physics using rare-isotope beams to address some of the most fundamental questions in science. Lockyer expanded the laboratory’s operations by 25 percent, earning a reputation as a national leader and team-builder. He also developed a strong working partnership among Canada’s major science laboratories and built international collaborations.

Prior to leading TRIUMF, Lockyer was a professor of physics at the University of Pennsylvania.

His research focused on high-energy particle experiments at the energy frontier, with an interest in testing fundamental symmetries and studying the heaviest quarks. While at Pennsylvania, Lockyer developed his interest in the applications of physics to real-world problems; he worked with the Penn Medical School on proton therapy for cancer and detectors for medical physics.

He has served at Fermilab in a variety of capacities dating back more than 25 years.

Fermi National Accelerator Lab

Fermi National Accelerator Lab

Lockyer performed research for many years at the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) experiment at the laboratory’s Tevatron particle accelerator, serving as the experiment’s co-spokesperson from 2002 through 2004. CDF and DZero achieved world acclaim for discovering and studying the top quark, one of the fundamental building blocks of nature. He was a Fermilab guest scientist from 2001 to 2005 and a visiting scientist during the summers of 1987 and 1988.

Born in Scotland and raised in Canada, Lockyer received his graduate education in the United States. He earned his B.S. in physics from York University in Toronto and his Ph.D. in physics from The Ohio State University.

He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and a recipient of the society’s 2006 Panofsky Prize for his leading research on the bottom quark.

In receiving an honorary degree from NIU, Lockyer joins a cast of other noteworthy individuals.

The list includes former U.S. Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert; Argonne National Laboratory Director Eric D. Isaacs and former Argonne directors Robert Rosner and Hermann Grunder; author and physician Abraham Verghese; historian Arthur Schlesinger; U.S. Sen. Paul Simon; poet Gwendolyn Brooks; astronomer Carl Sagan; U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth; Leland A. Strom, former chairman of the board and CEO of the Farm Credit Administration; Layli Miller-Muro, founder and executive director of the Tahirih Justice Center; Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of Thailand; John Sall, executive vice president of the SAS Institute; and Frances Whitehead, a civic practice artist and professor of sculpture.

Date posted: May 1, 2015 | Author: | Comments Off on Fermilab director Nigel Lockyer to receive honorary NIU doctorate

Categories: Awards Faculty & Staff Graduate School Latest News Research Science and Technology

An early shot of the tornado near Franklin Grove, Ill. Photo courtesy Walker Ashley, NIU Deparment of Geography

An early shot of the April 9 tornado near Franklin Grove, Ill.
Photo courtesy Walker Ashley, NIU Department of Geography

In response to the April 9 tornado in the northern Illinois region, the NIU Department of Geography is inviting the public to a tornado and weather preparedness symposium that will feature talks by weather and emergency-response experts.

It will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday, April 30, in the auditorium of Montgomery Hall on campus.

NIU meteorology professor Walker Ashley will be among the speakers and will examine several different scenarios that could have played out had the tornado taken a different path over more populated and developed areas.

A detailed story on the symposium is posted to the NIU Newsroom.

Date posted: April 27, 2015 | Author: | Comments Off on Symposium will examine region’s severe weather hazards

Categories: Communiversity Events Faculty & Staff Latest News Liberal Arts and Sciences Research Science and Technology

Students from the Community Organizations in a Digital World class include (left to right) Jennifer Sanchez, Julia Metz, Hayley Jackson and Amanda Nellett.

Students from the Community Organizations in a Digital World class include (left to right) Jennifer Sanchez, Julia Metz, Hayley Jackson and Amanda Nellett.

NIU’s Center for Non-Governmental Organization Leadership and Development (NGOLD) is gearing up to present the Non-Profit Technology Showcase, featuring the work of students who have spent the semester assisting 10 area community organizations on their technology needs.

The free event is open to the public and will be held from 8:45 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday, May 2, in the Illinois Room of the Holmes Student Center. Free weekend parking is available in the visitors lot.

Students involved in the showcase were participants in a class titled, “Community Organizations in a Digital World,” taught by professor Alicia Schatteman for NIU’s Community Leadership and Civic Engagement program.

Presentation topics include use of data analytics, website development, social media campaigns, volunteer management, nonprofit branding and video campaigns.

Students worked with a wide range of organizations, including the Kishwaukee YMCA, the Kishwaukee United Way, the DeKalb County Health Department, Barb Food Mart, We Care Pregnancy Clinic, Sycamore Education Foundation, DeKalb Area Agricultural Heritage Association, Children’s Community Theatre, DeKalb Public Library and the Lambi Fund of Haiti.

“I am so proud that my students can learn how to effectively use technology and support the technology needs of area community organizations,” Schatteman said. “Linking the community to the classroom is a way to give students practical experience and build the available resources of nonprofits.”

More information is available on Facebook and Twitter or by contacting Schatteman at (815) 753-0942 or aschatteman@niu.edu.

 

Date posted: April 24, 2015 | Author: | Comments Off on NIU students will show how they helped area nonprofits with tech needs

Categories: Business Events Faculty & Staff Liberal Arts and Sciences Students What's Going On

NIU students enjoy games provided by The Gaming Goat during last year’s De-Stress Fest

NIU students enjoy games provided by The Gaming Goat during last year’s De-Stress Fest

Feeling the pressure of upcoming finals? Take a break at the NIU Anthropology Museum, which will be transformed into a “no-stress zone” from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday, April 28th.

Students can sip a cup of calming tea, play board games, participate in art activities, get free massages and enjoy guided meditation as well as Japanese Reiki. Relaxation stations will be located directly outside the museum and throughout Cole Hall.

The second annual “De-Stress Fest” is organized entirely by students for students. The Anthropology Museum Student Advocacy Board established this event last year to give students a place to relax while experiencing how cultures around the world manage stress.

“We are excited to bring back De-Stress Fest for 2015,” says Student Advocacy Board co-chair Karissa Kessen. “Whether students have a few minutes in between classes or an hour lunch break, they can come and try calming teas, have a quick massage and play games. We hope students can take the different de-stressing techniques and use them to relax and focus during finals week.”

Anthropology graduate student Nathan Cooley constructed Lego towers that were displayed in a pop-up exhibit at De-Stress Fest 2014.

Anthropology graduate student Nathan Cooley constructed Lego towers that were displayed in a pop-up exhibit at De-Stress Fest 2014.

Student Advocacy Board members gained real-world museum experience by identifying local businesses and approaching them to be program partners. Partners include, but are not limited to, The Gaming Goat, NIU Robotics Club, NIU Health Enhancement, Sycamore Integrated Health, Wise Owl Wellness and the NIU Geography Club.

Organized in 2013, the Museum Student Advocacy Board serves to boost campus awareness of the Anthropology Museum. Its members work closely with museum staff on outreach and publicity. They completed more than 100 surveys of NIU students in the winter of 2013 to better understand how the museum can be more relevant to students’ lives.

“The Anthropology Museum celebrates cultural diversity in everything it does, from preserving rare and wonderful objects from cultures around the world to curating exhibits for visitors and teaching students with hands-on experiences,” says museum director Jennifer Kirker Priest.

“Since educational exhibits don’t necessarily bring students into the museum by themselves, the Student Advocacy Board helps to envision bold new ways the museum can reach out to NIU students as a place where they can come to learn about things like how activist anthropology can empower local communities from Haiti to DeKalb. It’s also a place where they can come for free, fun programs.”

For more event information, please contact the co-chair of the Student Advocacy Board, Katy Voight, at katyvoight1@gmail.com or the Anthropology Museum at (815) 753-2520.

Date posted: April 8, 2015 | Author: | Comments Off on De-Stress Fest will help students unwind before finals week

Categories: Arts Events Latest News Students Visual

3d dipole integration tunnelOver the weekend, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator began its second act.

After two years of upgrades and repairs, proton beams once again circulated around the Large Hadron Collider, located at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland.

It’s an important and exciting project for scientists and students in the Northern Illinois University physics department and the more than 1,700 U.S. scientists who work on LHC experiments. They are prepared to join thousands of their international colleagues to study the highest-energy particle collisions ever achieved in the laboratory.

These collisions – hundreds of millions of them every second – will lead scientists to new and unexplored realms of physics, and could yield extraordinary insights into the nature of the physical universe.

A highlight of the LHC’s first run, which began in 2009, was the discovery of the Higgs boson, the last in the suite of elementary particles that make up scientists’ best picture of the universe and how it works. The discovery of the Higgs was announced in July 2012 by two experimental collaborations, ATLAS and CMS. Continuing to measure the properties of the Higgs will be a major focus of LHC Run 2.

“The Higgs discovery was one of the most important scientific achievements of our time,” said James Siegrist, the U.S. Department of Energy’s associate director of science for high energy physics. “With the LHC operational again, at even higher energies, the possibilities for new discoveries are endless, and the United States will be at the forefront of those discoveries.”

Dhiman Chakraborty

Dhiman Chakraborty

Since joining ATLAS in 2007, the NIU team, led by physics professor Dhiman Chakraborty, has contributed to a number of critical aspects of the project.

“The NIU team members continue to shoulder key responsibilities in monitoring and certifying the quality of data taken with the Tile Hadronic Calorimeter (TileCal),” Chakraborty said. “This component of the ATLAS detector is essential in measuring the energies of many particles that are created from the enormous energy of each collision event, with particles traveling outward in all directions at speeds approaching that of light.”

NIU also has the full responsibility to ensure that the results of daily calibration of the entire TileCal are properly stored and available at all times, so as to deliver the most accurate measurements.

Another critical project where NIU has been active is the ATLAS Fast Tracker (FTK) upgrade.

Team members have contributed to understanding performance expectations and algorithm optimizations leading to the realization of the FTK, which is set to afford vast improvements in ATLAS’s capability to take cleaner data in the upcoming run of the LHC. Professor Jahred Adelman, who joined NIU in fall 2014, is in charge of simulation of the FTK, which is designed, built and operated by 13 institutions, including five from the United States.

Members of the NIU team also have been deeply involved in and contributed extensively to analyses of proton-proton collision data collected by ATLAS in search of signs of physical phenomena and laws yet to be discovered. So far, three NIU graduate students have earned their Ph.D. degrees studying production and decay of top quarks and heavy gauge bosons – processes that have a high probability of revealing such signals in a wide range of scenarios.

Two other graduate students, Blake Burghgrave and Puja Saha, are currently engaged in studies of the Higgs sector. Additional members of ATLAS team from NIU include senior research scientist Yuri Smirnov and post-doctoral research associate Nancy Andari.

“We are engaged in a program of research aimed at gaining a deeper insight into the Higgs sector, which may well turn out to have a structure richer than what has been revealed so far,” Chakraborty said. “The NIU team is focusing particularly on the deep connection between the top quark and the Higgs boson. This is one of the highest priorities on the physics charter for the upcoming run of the LHC.”

CERN logoThe NIU ATLAS effort has attracted more than $2 million in federal funding already, in addition to external funding through collaborative partnerships with other institutions.

During the LHC’s second run, particles will collide at a staggering 13 teraelectronvolts (TeV), which is 60 percent higher than any accelerator has achieved before. The LHC’s four major particle detectors – ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb – will collect and analyze data from these collisions, allowing them to probe new areas of research that were previously unattainable.

At 17 miles around, the Large Hadron Collider is one of the largest machines ever built. The United States played a vital role in the construction of the LHC and the huge and intricate detectors for its experiments. Seven national laboratories joined roughly 90 U.S. universities to build key components of the accelerator, detectors and computing infrastructure, with funding from the DOE Office of Science and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The U.S. contingent was part of an estimated 10,000 people from 113 different countries who helped to design, build and upgrade the LHC accelerator and its four particle detectors.

“We are on the threshold of an exciting time in particle physics. The LHC will turn on with the highest energy beam ever achieved,” said Fleming Crim, NSF assistant director for mathematical and physical sciences. “This energy regime will open the door to new discoveries about our universe that were impossible as recently as two years ago.”

In addition to the scientists pushing toward new discoveries on the four main experiments, the U.S. provides a significant portion of the computing and data analysis – roughly 23 percent for ATLAS and 33 percent for CMS.

U.S. institutions will continue to make important contributions to the LHC and its experiments, even beyond the second run, which is scheduled to continue through the middle of 2018. Universities and national laboratories are developing new accelerator and detector technology for future upgrades of the LHC and its experiments. This ongoing work encourages a strong partnership between science and industry, and drives technological innovation.

“Operating accelerators for the benefit of the physics community is what CERN’s here for,” CERN Director General Rolf Heuer said. “Today, CERN’s heart beats once more to the rhythm of the LHC.”

More information on the U.S. role in the Large Hadron Collider is available online, as is a series of videos on the LHC featuring U.S. scientists.

Date posted: April 6, 2015 | Author: | Comments Off on NIU physicists excited about restart of Large Hadron Collider

Categories: Faculty & Staff Latest News Liberal Arts and Sciences Research Science and Technology Students