Wednesday, October 20, 1999

McFarland Named DOE Outstanding Young Investigator

Kevin McFarland, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Rochester, has received an Outstanding Junior Investigator award from the Department of Energy. This award helps talented young physicists establish research programs early in their careers, and will contribute $400,000 to McFarland's five-year study, starting with $80,000 this year. McFarland will explore why subatomic particles have mass and from hence it comes by studying the top quark---the heaviest of the 12 most basic building blocks of matter.

Currently, McFarland and his team of seven students and postdoctoral researchers, including two graduate students from the University, are participating in preparations for a large-scale experiment at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago. The experiment, known as CDF, will use the Tevatron supercollider, one of the world's most powerful accelerators. Approximately 500 physicists and several hundred engineers and technicians are working on CDF, while another large group is preparing for an experiment known as D0. Recent improvements to the laboratory's detectors and accelerator will yield more intense and energetic beams of protons and antiprotons, and more subatomic particles from collisions.

In addition to winning the Young Investigator Award, McFarland's research earned him recognition as a Sloan Research Fellow in 1998, the same year he joined Rochester. McFarland earned his doctoral degree in physics from the University of Chicago and his bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics from Brown University.

For further details, see the article in the September 27, 1999 issue of UR Currents.

Article submitted by:
Stephen L. Teitel
10/20/99; 3:44:05 PM

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