Alumni of Professor Gratta’s
Research Groups
YiFang Wang
Glenn Horton-Smith
Nikolai Lehtinen
Yoshi Uchida
Thomas Koffas
Peter Fierliner
Lester Miller, Ph.D (2000)
Jason Detwiler, Ph.D. (2005)
Nikolai Tolich, Ph.D. (2005)
Sam Waldman, Ph.D. (2005)
Jesse Wodin, Ph.D. (2007)
Kazumi Tolich, Ph.D. (2008)
Justin Vandenbroucke (Class of 2002)
Dennis Murphree (Class of 2001)
Shaffique Adam (Class of 2000)
Carlos Ancona-Torres (Class of 2000)
Research Staff
YiFang Wang (1996- 2001) Yi-Fang was the first addition to the group! He single-handedly designed all of the electronics for the Palo Verde detector. He also greatly contributed to pretty much every aspect of Palo Verde. His data analysis skills allowed the experiment to produce results in an accurate and timely fashion. He also devoloped a new technique to subtract backgrounds in low-energy anti-neutrino detectors and wrote several papers on Palo Verde data. He was a very important player in the early design of the KamLAND detector. YiFang moved-on to become a professor at IHEP, the main particle physics lab in the People's Republic of China. Most recently he is leading the Daya Bay experiment to measure the mixing angle theta 13 with nuclear-reactor generated neutrinos. Glenn Horton-Smith (1998) Glenn was a postdoc at Stanford for about 6 months, after receiving his PhD on the SLAC 144 experiment. During his brief tenure he developed an apparatus to measure radon permeability through plastic films. His device was used to select the material for the KamLAND balloon. Glenn then moved to Tohoku University with a JSPS fellowship for 2 years. He was then a postdoc at Caltech and is now an Assistant Professor at Kansas State University. Nikolai Lehtinen (2000-2001) Nikolai worked on the basics of acoustic ultra-high energy neutrinos detection, producing the first paper on the subject. He then moved to the University of Hawaii tackling the problem of radio detection of cosmic rays. He is now back at Stanford, in the EE department. Yoshi Uchida (2001-2004) Yoshi was a postdoc in the group working on KamLAND. He was one of the KamLAND software gurus and early US analysis coordinator. Many of the initial data analysis tools that allowed KamLAND to quickly produce results are due to Yoshi's ability of writing code in languages whose mere existence is unknown to most of us. Because of his peculiar accent Yoshi moved-on to become a Lecturer at the Imperial College, London where he is still active in neutrinos physics. Thomas Koffas (2001-2004) Thomas came to the group as a postdoc with skills in both particle physics and laser science. He was the main force behind our early experiments that demonstrated superior energy resolution in liquid xenon. He also did some of the early work on Ba ion trapping. He then moved to CERN as a Fellow and then Staff member and is now involved in the Atlas experiment. Peter Fierlinger (2006-2008) Peter came to the group with a heavy luggage of experimental skills acquired while
studying ultra-cold neutrons for his PhD at ILL and PSI in Europe. He completely developed
a device that allows the measurement and stabilization of very thin layers of solid Xe in a
liquid Xe or vacuum environment. The full device includes a miniaturized LHe cryostat as well
as a nanofabricated sensor with single monolayer resolution. Peter then turned to improving the
system by replacing the LHe cryostat with a miniaturized 2-stage Joule-Thompson cooler. Peter
was then back on his way to native Europe as a professor in Munich where he is starting a new
lab in ultra-cold neutron science.
Graduate Students Lester Miller, Ph.D
(2000) Lester was the first graduate student in the group. He was also, at times, the only graduate student in the group and hence he learned early to shoulder heavy responsibilities. He is the only Stanford physics student to be known to have lived 6 months in a trailer in the Arizona desert for his love for science. Lester physically put together most of the Palo Verde detector, programmed and debugged the trigger and much of the electronics and graduated on the analysis of neutrino oscillations. He then moved to Harvard as a postdoc working on the CDF experiment and, later, to SLAC where he worked on GLAST. Since 2006 he works at the Sierra Nevada Corporation, in Los Gatos CA (where, apparently, he does not make beer). Jason Detwiler,
Ph.D. (2005) Jason did his PhD thesis on KamLAND. He had the rare privilege of observing a new phenomenon of physics in the course of his graduate student career, observing, for the first time, what SuperKamiokande scientists cleverly call "the oscillatory behavior of neutrino oscillations". Jason has also greatly contributed to the construction of the KamLAND detector, spending substantial time in Japan installing photomultipliers and debugging the data acquisitions system for the experiment. After graduation Jason became a postdoc at the University of Washington in Seattle. Since 2007 he is the Glenn Seaborg fellow at LBNL (and assures that this does not imply he has turned into a chemist!) Nikolai
Tolich, Ph.D. (2005) Nikolai designed and built the trigger and GPS clock systems for the KamLAND experiment. He then contributed to the commissioning of the readout system for the experiment. For his Ph.D dissertation Nikolai measured, for the first time ever, antineutrinos produced by uranium and thorium decays inside the earth. He ended up learning lots of things about chondritic meteorites and other strange subjects (for a particle physicist) in the field of earth and planetary science. Nikolai’s thesis work represents the first example of “applied neutrino physics”, a pretty impressive distinction that was recognized by the award of the APS Dissertation Award in Nuclear Physics. After graduating Nikolai worked as a postdoc at LBNL on the SNO experiment and is now at Assistant Professor at the University of Washingthon in Seattle. At the time of writing (2008) Nikolai has almost entirely lost his Kiwi accent and so he is now rather understendable! Sam Waldman, Ph.D.
(2005) Sam is the heroic founder of the atomic physics branch of the group. He was somehow convinced to join a particle physics group to setup an ion trap and a laser spectroscopy lab from nothing. He built countless electronics and optical gadgets and brought to life a system where Ba-ion trapping and spectroscopy could be studied in the presence of different gases including xenon. His data and theoretical models were then used by a new generation of students to design a large, linear quadrupole trap, optimized for high efficiency ion loading. On the side Sam also contributed in a great way to the work that the group did to drasticallt improve the energy resolution in liquid xenon detectors. After graduation Sam moved to Caltech as a LIGO postdoc and in 2008 to MIT as a research scientist. Jesse
Wodin, Ph.D. (2007) Kazumi Tolich, Ph.D. (2008) Undergraduate Students Justin Vandenbroucke (Class of 2002) Justin built the first generation DAQ for the SAUND project. This was the first detector of ultra-high-energy cosmic ray neutrinos using acoustic techniques. After graduating Justing took a year off with the intent of traveling, but he was hooked by physics and, instead spent most of the year analysing SAUND1 data and writing the first paper on the subject. He then moved across the Bay for graduate school, exporting the acoustic technique to Berkeley and the Ice3 detector. Dennis Murphree
(Class of 2001) Dennis helped design parts of he KamLAND data acquisition while at Stanford. He also spent a summer in Japan assemblying the KamLAND detector. His professional rock climbing skills provided a way to clean acrylic plates while belaying from a rope inside KamLAND. After graduation Dennis spent a year at the University of Barcelona on a Fullbright fellowship to then move for graduate school to Yale where he works in Prof. David DeMille's group. Shaffique Adam (Class of
2000) Shaffique performed the very early calculations on the subject of acoustic ultra high energy cosmic-ray neutrino detection. He then obtained a PhD from Cornell working on condensed matter theory. He is currently a postdoc at the University of Maryland. Carlos Ancona-Torres
(Class of 2000) Carlos investigated infrared emission by liquid helium irradiated by ionising particles.
He them moved to University of Chicago for graduate school. |
