Objective of the basics science research in nuclear and particle physics is to improve our understanding of nature at elementary level. Though originally people conducted basic science for pure curiosity as our understanding of nature grow more complete research became more complex and costly. Modern day basics science research is well planned and mainly conducted at state of the art particle accelerator laboratories all across the united states and around the globe with collaborations of scientists in diverse fields of expertise. One very famous particle accelerator + collider is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which is the world’s largest and most powerful particle collider. There are many such unique facilities exist to study different aspect of nature. The Jefferson Lab (JLab) at Newport News, Virginia is a federally funded research and development center dedicated to exploring the nature of matter using an accelerated electron beam (https://www.jlab.org/). I conduct my research activities described above in few experiments. I also contribute to research and development of future experiments at this facility.
Students participate in basics science research in nuclear and particle physics learn many different computing and electronics skills. Students will have many career choices in industry and in academia after graduating with these set of skills. I can discuss many skills you as a prospective student will be able to master while conducting research related to the Jefferson Lab during an in person discussion.
We conduct most of our daily computing needs on open source softwares mainly on Linux systems. Students will get the opportunity to master their computer programming skills. We mainly use C++ and C++ based data analysis softwares. There are situation where legacy softwares are involved that would need some FORTRAN programming skills.