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Project Descriptions
Spring 2026

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Showing 24 projects out of 24 found. On page 1 out of 1.
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Calibration of the Mu2e Tracking Detector

Yury Kolomensky - Professor, Physics

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: Off Campus

Mu2e is a medium-scale Particle Physics experiment currently under construction at Fermi National Lab, with UCB and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab as collaborating institutions. Mu2e will search for the ultra-rare process whereby a muon particle converts directly into an electron, without the emission of any neutrinos. Though not...

 Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Improving electron momentum resolution for muon-to-electron conversion searches using novel stopping target geometries

Yury Kolomensky - Professor, Physics

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: Off Campus

Mu2e is a medium-scale Particle Physics experiment currently under construction at Fermi National Lab, with UCB and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab as collaborating institutions. Mu2e will search for the ultra-rare process whereby a muon particle converts directly into an electron, without the emission of any neutrinos. Though not...

 Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Improving Mu2e momentum resolution through Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy

Yury Kolomensky - Professor, Physics

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Mu2e is a medium-scale Particle Physics experiment currently under construction at Fermi National Lab, with UCB and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab as collaborating institutions. Mu2e will search for the ultra-rare process whereby a muon particle converts directly into an electron, without the emission of any neutrinos. Though not...

 Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Data acquisition and real-time data pipeline for cryogenic calorimeter experiments

Yury Kolomensky - Professor, Physics

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Superconducting sensors, such as Transition-edge sensors (TESs) coupled with superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs), are used in many applications, from quantum computing to astrophysics to particle physics. For rare-events search experiments, such as neutrinoless double beta decay, a multiplexed readout is necessary for low-temperature experiments which operate...

 Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Research in Cosmology and Dark Matter Instrumentation (LBNL)

Adrian Lee - Professor, Physics

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

We are working on precision measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – the relic thermal radiation that decoupled from the primordial plasma when the universe was just 0.003% of its current age. Measurements of the CMB have been central to the formation of the modern picture of the universe, and...

 Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Research in Cosmic Microwave Background (UC Berkeley Campus)

Adrian Lee - Professor, Physics

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a unique window to fundamental physics. It can be used to probe primordial gravitational waves, which are a distinct sign that the early universe has experienced an exponentially rapid expansion at its age of ~10^-32 seconds. The CMB photons also probe the properties...

 Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Instrumentation Development for Cosmic Microwave Background, Dark Matter, and Dark Ages experiments at LBNL

Adrian Lee - Professor, Physics

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: Off Campus

Our team specializes in the development, production, and evaluation of highly sensitive detectors, antennas, and readout electronics for a diverse range of cosmology experiments. These endeavors capitalize on the extraordinary properties of superconductivity and the principles of microwave engineering. Through the application of these cutting-edge techniques, we are interested...

 Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Research in Cosmic Microwave Background analysis and simulations

Adrian Lee - Professor, Physics

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is the oldest light in the Universe, and carries invaluable information about the Universe’s history and evolution. The detection of primordial gravitational waves in the CMB polarisation, a smoking gun for cosmic inflation, is one of the biggest challenges in observational cosmology. To achieve the...

 Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Neutrino Physics

Kam-Biu Luk - Professor, Physics

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: Off Campus

Neutrino is a sub-atomic particle that was thought to be massless. Recently, a new phenomenon called neutrino oscillation, a transformation of one type of neutrino to another kind, has been discovered in experiments. These important findings imply that neutrinos have mass and they can mix among themselves. Neutrino oscillations...

 Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Machine learning applications to DUNE prototype data

Kam-Biu Luk - Professor, Physics

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: Off Campus

This project will focus on applying contrastive learning and anomaly detection techniques to various DUNE prototype simulated and real datasets in order to identify deficiencies in our understanding of how neutrinos interact. The work will involve: preparing inputs from the DUNE simulation and data suitable for ML-libraries; development of...

 Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Supernova Spectroscopy: Forward modeling and Data analysis

Saul Perlmutter - Professor, Physics

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are critical for cosmology. They were first used to discover the fact that the expansion of the universe is speeding up and are now being used to measure the current rate of expansion. We’re in a time with a huge influx of data with JWST...

 Engineering, Design & Technologies   Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Constraining Cosmology from Modeling Strong Gravitational Lenses on Multiple GPU Nodes

Saul Perlmutter - Professor, Physics

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

Strong gravitational lenses are very rare occurrences and are a powerful tool in studying dark matter and dark energy, two mysterious entities that together account for 95% of the energy in the universe. The strong lensing team works on a range of projects with cutting-edge AI/ML techniques. We...

 Engineering, Design & Technologies   Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Measuring the universe with nearby and distant supernovae

Saul Perlmutter - Professor, Physics

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Type Ia supernovae are used to measure the rate at which our Universes is expanding, today and over the past 10 billion years. In the past we used Type Ia supernovae to discover that the expansion of the universe is speeding up. Now we have developed new techniques for making...

 Engineering, Design & Technologies   Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Cosmology with Roman space telescope spectra of Type Ia Supernovae

Saul Perlmutter - Professor, Physics

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: Off Campus

It has been thought that the accelerated expansion of our universe is caused by an unknown "dark energy" which has a constant energy density. However, there are currently hints that dark energy is actually evolving over time. If this were true, there would be implications on fundamental physics and potentially...

 Engineering, Design & Technologies   Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Investigating copper surface treatments for cryogenic quantum sensor testing

Chiara Salemi - Professor, Physics

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Low-temperature experiments—such as many axion dark matter searches, quantum computing, and condensed matter studies—require an exceptional understanding of the materials used in and around the experiment. Insights into the behavior of materials at such low temperatures are necessary to understand signal backgrounds, ensuring effective thermalization, and minimizing...

Machine learning for axion dark matter data analysis

Chiara Salemi - Professor, Physics

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Axions are a highly motivated candidate to be the dark matter. The signal profile in a detector depends on the properties of the Milky Way's dark matter halo properties. Certain halo models predict signal shapes that are challenging to differentiate from noise, and recent work has indicated that machine learning...

Research on Precision Silicon Position Sensors for the LHC and Data Analysis and Simulation Studies for Present and Future Collider Experiments

Marjorie Shapiro - Professor, Physics

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the most powerful particle accelerator ever built and researchers use its data to study what the universe was like shortly after the big bang. Researchers at Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) play a key role in all aspects of the ATLAS...

 Mathematical and Physical Sciences   Arts & Humanities

Restoring the Earliest Sound Recordings

Marjorie Shapiro - Professor, Physics

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

LBNL researchers developed a novel method to restore early sound recordings using methods from precision optical metrology and data analysis (see: irene.lbl.gov). These methods have been applied to a number of important historical collections of early recorded sound. Over the past two years a project at the Smithsonian Institution in...

 Mathematical and Physical Sciences   Arts & Humanities

Search for New Physics with the ATLAS Experiment at the LHC

Haichen Wang - Professor, Physics

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the most powerful particle accelerator ever built and researchers use its data to study what the universe was like shortly after the big bang. Researchers at Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) play a key role in all aspects of the ATLAS...

 Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Language Models for Particle Detectors

Haichen Wang - Professor, Physics

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Particle detectors like the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider are complex apparatuses whose language is made of data recorded in sub-detectors and sophisticated readout modules. Inspired by large language model's revolutions in natural language processing, this project ultimately aims to develop one or more language models at...

 Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Machine Learning and Agentic Workflow for High Energy Physics

Haichen Wang - Professor, Physics

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: Off Campus

In addition to the description below, this Fall (2025) we are adding a new component to our MLforHEP program. We are developing Large Language Model powered agent to automate data analysis and other computational tasks in High Energy Physics. High-energy physics data analysis deals with a huge amount of...

 Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Creation of Cartoons and Animations for Particle Physics Outreach

Haichen Wang - Professor, Physics

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

We are seeking enthusiastic students to help create engaging STEM education and outreach materials to communicate the exciting science of high-energy physics to the public. This project will involve a directed reading component, during which students will conduct a literature review and discuss the material with a mentor. Together...

 Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Data Access and Visualization for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument

Martin White - Professor, Physics

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: Off Campus

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI, https://desi.lbl.gov) is making the world's largest 3D map of the universe. In this project you will help us develop web-based data access, visualization, and analysis tools for use by thousands of scientists worldwide...

 Mathematical and Physical Sciences   Digital Humanities and Data Science

Cosmology Data Analysis for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument

Martin White - Professor, Physics

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: Off Campus

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey is measuring the expansion history of our universe with unprecedented precision. By measuring the light from tens of millions of extragalactic objects, the DESI team aims to understand the nature of dark energy and how it has shaped our universe. Critical to DESI’s...

 Mathematical and Physical Sciences   Digital Humanities and Data Science

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