Emanuel Strauss : Curriculum Vitae

Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA 2004 – 2009
Doctor of Philosophy - Physics
Advisors: John D. Hobbs and Paul D. Grannis

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA 2000 – 2004
Bachelors of Arts - Physics / Bachelors of Science - Computer Science

Stanford / SLAC, Menlo Park, CA, USA 2009 – present
Research Associate

Computer-Vision For Jet Identification 2013
Michigan State Experimental Seminar Series, East Lansing, MI, USA

Results of the search for Heavy Higgs and BSM Higgs Bosons from ATLAS 2013
Aspen 2013: Higgs Quo Vadis, Aspen, CO, USA

Online Measurement of LHC Beam Parameters with the ATLAS High Level Trigger 2011
ACAT2011, London, UK

A Search for Lepton-Jets with Muons in the ATLAS Detector 2011
BOOST2011, Princeton, NJ, USA

ZZ Observation at the Tevatron 2009
Young Scientists Talk, Moriond EW, La Thuile, Italy

Search for ZZ Production in pp Collisions Using the DØ Detector 2009
APS April Meeting, St. Louis, MO, USA

G. Aad et al. [ATLAS Collaboration], “A Search for Prompt Lepton-Jets in pp Collisions at = 7 TeV with the ATLAS Detector'', Phys. Lett. B 719 (2013) 299-317.

G. Aad et al. [ATLAS Collaboration], ``Performance of the ATLAS Trigger System in 2010'', Eur. Phys. J. C 72 (2012) 1849.

E. Strauss, ``Online measurement of LHC beam parameters with the ATLAS High Level Trigger,'' J. Phys. Conf. Ser. 368 012003 (2012)

G. Aad et al. [ATLAS Collaboration], “A Search for Lepton-Jets with Muons in pp Collisions at = 7 TeV in the ATLAS Detector”, ATLAS-CONF-2011-076, CERN, (2011).

V. M. Abazov et al. [DØ Collaboration], “Search for ZH to ℓℓbb production in 4.2 pb^-1 of pp collisions at = 1.96 TeV”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 251801 (2010).

V. M. Abazov et al. [DØ Collaboration], “Observation of ZZ production in pp collisions at = 1.96 TeV”,Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 171803 (2008).

V. M. Abazov et al. [DØ Collaboration], “ZZ → ℓ⁺ℓ^-νν production in p anti-p collisions at = 1.96 TeV”,Phys. Rev. D 78, 072002 (2008).

S.S. Junnarkar et. al., “Advanced front end signal processing electronics for ATLAS cathode strip chamber system”, Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record, 2005 IEEE, Vol. 2, 23-29 Oct.(2005).

Measurement of the LHC Beam Parameters Using the Distributed High Level Trigger System of the ATLAS Detector During 2009 and 2010 2010
CHEP, Taipei, Taiwan

Characterization of Interaction-Point Beam Parameters Using the pp Event-Vertex Distribution Reconstructed inthe ATLAS Detector at the LHC2010
IPAC, Kyoto, Japan

ZH → e⁺e^-bb2009
Fermilab User’s Meeting, Batavia, IL. USA

ZZ Observation at the Tevatron2008
Fermilab User’s Meeting, Batavia, IL. USA

Runner Up: Fermilab User’s Meeting Poster Competition 2009
Nathaniel and Fannie Sorof Award 2006

Deputy Trigger Operations Manager2011 – present

The Trigger Operations Manager and his deputy are tasked with the proper running of the ATLAS triggers. In so doing, we are responsible for scheduling changes to the trigger in the ATLAS control room while liasing with Run Coordination and the various sub-detector experts. This also means making any operational decisions that require immediate action (typically < 24h). A rotating crew of five on-call shifters report to us. With their help we monitor the online system and shepherd new features and bug-fixes through the development and validation pipeline. I oversaw the transition from proton-proton collisions to heavy ion collisions in 2011, which involved an immediate analysis of the trigger software, hours after the first data was taken. We are now preparing for the 2012 start-up.

MSSM b(H → bb) 2011 – present

For certain parameters of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model the Higgs boson may decay exclusively to pairs of τ particles or b-quarks. The SLAC group has recently begun an analysis searching for events of the latter kind. The signature was completely unattended to, in part because it is a difficult final state for a hadron collider to detect because of large sources of background, but caters especially to the expertise of the SLAC group. Two Stanford students based at CERN are involved in this project, and I have been supervising them for the purposes of this analysis. We are in active development, and a presentation prelminary studies has been made to the ATLAS Higgs sub-group.

Exotic Lepton Jets 2009 – present

The presence of a massive photon in the dark sector would explain some anomalies in the dark matter data and may produce collimated groups of leptons. I was responsible for developing an analysis framework, designing selection requirements, estimating the efficiencies, and assesing the sensitivity of the first public result using muons. Last year, I presented the new limits on the signal cross-section at the BOOST conference on behalf of the ATLAS Collaboration. More recently, I have been joined by two students who are helping me process additional data and develop the electron channel.

Beamspot Measurement 2009 – present

The b-jet triggers require precise knowledge of the position and size of the three-dimensional luminosity distribution to maintain a high signal purity. I developed tools which measure the luminous region width, correcting for resolution effects in-situ using the ATLAS High-Level Trigger (HLT). These values are calculated for each of the > 1300 proton bunch crossings. Of the four major detectors on the LHC, ATLAS is the only one with the ability to publish this information in real-time. I presented this technical achievement at the ACAT conference in 2011. The data are now published to databases for use by HLT algorithms and ATLAS monitoring. These values have been of interest outside of the ATLAS collaboration as well. LHC accelerator physicists have included our work in some of their own papers and conference presentations.

Standard Model ZH → ℓℓbb 2008 – 2010

By expanding our coverage to include events in which only one muon passes the typical selection requirements and the other is selected using only an isolated track I added an extra 15% acceptance to the DØ dimuon ZH analysis, effectively raising the signal acceptance close to 95%. Additionally, I implemented a kinematic fit which balances the energies and angles of the signal’s leptons and jets, using the momentum of the diboson system and the dilepton mass as constraints. When added to the analysis multivariate classifier, these fit variables improve the sensitivity across all dilepton channels by about 7%. Finally, I was responsible for the combination and limit setting of the sub-channels. This analysis was published in 2010, along with the standard muon and electron channels, and still contributes to the Tevatron Higgs limit combination.

Jet Energy Resolution 2007 – 2009

I worked on using an H-Matrix method, in which the correlations among observables are used to estimate a hidden variable, to predict the parton energy of jets. The method works well for the energy spectra of various physics processes, providing a 10 to 15% improvement for light and heavy signal jets reconstructed in the DØ calorimeter.

Standard Model ZZ → ℓℓνν 2007 – 2008

For this analysis, I helped develop a new experimental variable which is robust against T mis-measurements. Although the rate of mis-measurements at the DØ  detector are small, it was a major problem in this analysis where the signal (ZZ) cross section is four orders of magnitude smaller than the dominant background (Drell-Yan). This new variable improved the signal acceptance vs background rejection by an order of magnitude, with respect to the traditional formulation of T. This analysis contributed, alongside the ZZ → ℓℓℓ′ℓ′ analysis, to the first observation of ZZ production at a hadron collider. It was the subject of two publications, and I presented it at the 2009 Moriond EW conference Young Scientists forum.

Data Quality 2006 – 2009

My contribution to the data quality assessment efforts at DØ was to help develop a tool which tracks trends in several well understood physics processes. Runs are evaluated by measuring the yields for a set of final states against time and luminosity. Those in which the effective cross section is different from the bulk, or in which the kinematic distributions differ from expectation, are flagged for further study.