As an international student who transferred to Pitt, I was not totally aware of the number of research opportunities offered for undergraduates. When I first got here, I looked into the website of the Department of Physics and Astronomy and saw what topics our professors were interested in. I have always been very curious about particle physics, so I was glad when I saw Dr. Hong’s profile, which matched my preferences. After reading some of his published papers, I sent him an email saying that I wanted to know more about his work and be a part of the group if possible. He quickly replied, and a few days later we had a meeting where he explained to me about the current projects his group was working on, and a general background about particle collisions in the Large Hadron Collider. By the end of the meeting, he gave me an initial task related to the research which was useful for me to realize if I was really interested in the type of work done, and also to see if I could start to make some contribution to the group’s work.
I remember that this first task was about analyzing the impact of changes in the architecture of a machine learning algorithm called “Boosted Decision Trees” (BDTs) on its runtime and on a potential implementation on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). It was very exciting for me to actually be working with machine learning, which is a concept that sounds interesting, but it is very abstract in the beginning. Furthermore, it was even more surprising when I saw through Dr. Hong’s group research that these techniques are being used and perfected in the context of High Energy physics and particle detection at the most powerful particle accelerator ever built (the LHC).
One year later, among other projects, I am still working on the implementation of BDTs in fast hardware-based triggers in the ATLAS detector, so I guess that I liked that first task I was given. In this past year, I have experienced working in a real physics research group, surrounded by experts in every field I studied. I feel that working in this type of collaborative environment is very important when thinking about a career in science, which is what I plan to pursue.
To a student who is interested in doing research of some kind, I would say that a good first approach would be looking into different professors’ websites and having a look at their descriptions of their research as well as current members of the group. That may provide an initial network of passionate people to contact with questions. Additionally, I believe that reaching out via email to a researcher whose work one finds intriguing is an effective method for clarifying doubts and obtaining more specific information.
