Analysis Centre studentships

The mission of the Analysis Centre is to enhance the physics potential of the German LHC / ILC community by providing analysis infrastructure and by supporting analysis-related issues of general relevance. This is achieved through education and training, basic research, tool development, analysis support and networking. The Analysis Centre currently focuses on the three main activities Monte Carlo generators, parton distribution functions (PDF), and statistics tools.

Twice a year the Analysis Centre (anacen@desy.de) invites applications for studentships. The selected Ph.D. students are invited to spend between 1 and 3 months at DESY (or another Alliance partner institute) to work on one of the projects of the Analysis Centre groups (MC, PDFs, Statistics Tools). The aim is to
- broaden the student’s horizon;
- increase the connections bet- ween different activities;
- bring in fresh ideas.

The selected students can choose among all topics offered by the Analysis Centre and has the freedom to offer own ideas.

The deadlines for applications are 31 January and 31 July of each year (in 2010, the January deadline is moved to 15 February). Applications should be sent to the AnalysisCentre and should comprise a CV, a short statement about research interests in the Analysis Centre and one letter of reference:

Terascale Analysis Centre / DESY-FH
Dr. Thomas Schörner-Sadenius
Notkestr. 85, D-22607 Hamburg
anacen@desy.de

The selection of candidates will be through a committee formed by Analysis Centre members.
Eligible are Ph.D. students from all Alliance partner institutes and also from abroad. Successful candidates will be granted travel money and a per diem to cover their costs.

As stated above, the studentships leave great freedom in choosing a research topic. However, the Analysis Centre and its groups certainly have numerous ideas for useful and promising contributions. Below a few of these potential tasks are given, separately for each group. Please contact the Analysis Centre or the respective groups for further information.

The Monte Carlo group offers numerous topics for contributions. Examples are (please contact the group convenors Albert Knutsson and Zoltan Nagy for more details):
- Determination of PDFs for MC generators ("PDF4MC" project)
- Study of the transverse momentum in gluon PDfs for MC generators (unintegrated PDFs)
- Fits of unintegrated PDFs
- Development of Monte Carlo analysis routines (HZTool and Rivet projects)
- Implementation of Rivet in CMS-software
- Implementation of tuning programs in CMS-software
- Tuning of MC parameters within CMS
- Tuning of parton shower parameters
- Studies of hard diffractions influence on UE and MB - and correct implementation of processes in MC generators
- Comparison of Monte Carlo predictions to first LHC data
- Development and validation of tuning tools for Monte Carlo generators
- Development of parton shower algorithms with full quantum interference
- ...

The Statistics Tools group is involved in the core development of numerous projects. A more complete overview can be achieved from Gero Flucke or Olaf Behnke. Examples for topics are:
- Benchmarking of fitting algorithms
- Application of unfolding algorithms to LHC data analyses (using the student's nominal Ph.D. data analysis)
- Porting of Fortran algorithms to C++ / ROOT.
- Implementation of modern numerical algorithms in BAT
- Development of prototype models for data analysis in high energy physics
- Development of test procedures for BAT using modern test suites

The PDF group invites contributions to their activities, for example in the following fields:
- Extracting flavor distributions from hard-scattering data
Please contact Johannes Blümlein, Sven Moch or Sasha Glazov for more details.

Also the SUSY/BSM Fit Working Group invites collaboration. Please contact the convenors in case of interest.