Maria Florencia Canelli is the Third UR Physics PhD Student to win the URA -Fermilab Best PhD Thesis Award
The University Research Association's (URA) Award for the best PhD Thesis at Fermilab this Past year (among about 50 PhDs per year) was won by a UR Physics PhD student. This is the third time (out of seven occasions) that one of our students has been so honored.
Florencia Canelli (picture on the left and also in the center of the photograph on the right) received her Ph,D, from the University of Rochester in 2003 on research on the DZero experiment with Professor Tom Ferbel. Florencia's award was presented by Fred Bernthal, President of URA, at the Fermilab User's Meeting on Thursday, June 3, 2004. Florencia's talk at the User's Meeting is available in the on-line proceedings of the 2004 Fermilab User's meeting. Audio and video of presentations made at the 2004 Users' Meeting are available online through Fermilab's Visual Media Services. http://www-visualmedia.fnal.gov/VMS_Site/r_StreamSearch.html or http://vmsstreamer1.fnal.gov/VMS_Site_02/Lectures/Users2004/index.htm
The picture on the right (from Fermilab Today) shows (L to R) Juan Estrada (UR PhD 2002 - also with Tom Ferbel on DZero, and currently a Wilson Fellow at Fermilab-DZero), Florencia (currently a postdoc at UCLA on CDF) , and Gaston Gutierrez (Fermilab-DZero). They are also responisble for a new measurement of the top mass, and have contributed extensively to the construction of the Central Fiber Tracker for Run II. Florencia's and Juan's PhD theses at the University of Rochester were based on novel analyses of data from the first run of the DZero detector.
Canelli used the technique that she helped develop to extract parameters of the top quark from data on top-antitop production. This yielded a measurement of the spin properties of W bosons that arise from the decay of top quarks. After her PhD at Rochester, she took a postdoc position with UCLA on the CDF experiment, where she is a convener of a group charged with establishing the precise energies of jets (remnants of quarks and gluons) observed in the CDF calorimeter.
The following is from Fermilab Today June 4, 2004 http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/archive_2004/today04-06-04.html.
Caption: Fred Bernthal (right) presented the 6th annual URA thesis award to Florencia Canelli, who received her Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. The $3,000 prize recognizes her outstanding thesis on the "Helicity of the W boson in single lepton p-pbar events," in which she describes a new method for extracting parameters from the decay of particles observed in the DZero experiment. Canelli, who is from Argentina, is now a postdoc at UCLA, working on the CDF experiment. (Click on image for larger version.)
This is the third time that a Rochester student won the URA/Fermilab Thesis award.
The following is a list of students who previously won this award:
1. Ian Adam, Columbia (Thesis submitted in 1997 on Dzero Experiment)
2. Peter Maksimovic,MIT (Thesis submitted in 1998 on CDF Experiment)
3. Peter Shawhan, Chicago (Thesis submitted in 1999 on KTeV Kaon Experiment)
4. Michael Fitch, Rochester (Thesis submitted in 2000 on Accelerator Experiment, advisor Adrian Melissinos ( see: Dept News Article).
5. Un Ki Yang, Rochester (Thesis submitted in 2001 on CCFR/NuTeV Neutrino Experiment, Arie Bodek (see: Dept News Article and Fermilab News Article).
6. Val Prasad, Chicago (Thesis submitted in 2002 on the KTeV experiment, advisor Ed Blucher)
7. Florencia Canelli , Rochester (Thesis submitted in 2003 on the DZero Experiment, advisor Tom Ferbel)
Prior to arriving at Rochester, Florencia studied at the Universities of Asuncion, Paraguay, and Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has been very active in outreach activities and in the work of the Young Particle Physicists (YPP) organization, of which she was a founding member. She has served as Chair of the YPP, as a member of Fermilab Users' Executive Committee, and as representative of the Graduate Student Association at Fermilab. She has represented both the DZero experiment and the YPP at several international conferences and workshops, and she was the recipient of the Frederick Lobkowicz Thesis Prize at Rochester, and of the New Talents Prize and Chien Shiung Wu Scholarship Award at the Erice School in 2001.
Universities Research Association, Inc. (URA), a consortium of 89 research universities in the U.S. and abroad, operates Fermilab under a contract with the Department of Energy.
Fermilab/URA Thesis Awards Program
Description: Fermilab and Universities Research Association (URA) Thesis Award honors the most outstanding thesis written on research conducted at Fermilab or in collaboration with Fermilab scientists. The award is presented each year by the President of URA at the annual Users' Meeting. Theses submitted during the previous calendar year (ending December 31) are eligible for the award. Selections are made by a committee, appointed by the Fermilab Director, and they are judged on clarity of presentation, originality, and physics content. To qualify the thesis must have been submitted to a URA member institution as partial fulfillment of the Ph.D. requirements, and it must have been submitted in electronic form to the Fermilab Publications Office in accordance with Fermilab policy.
The recipient of the award receives a certificate of recognition and a check for $3000. In addition, the recipient's name and the year of the award is engraved on a plaque containing the names of all past recipients, which resides permanently on the second floor of Wilson Hall.
Article submitted by:
Arie Bodek
5/6/04; 8:58:37 PM