The High Energy Physics group at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) seeks a postdoctoral research associate to work on the CMS experiment starting on or after August 16th, 2023. The candidate will join our ongoing program led by Profs. Adams, Cavanaugh, Gerber, Mills, and Varelas. Our group contributes to the CMS pixel tracker and the Level-1 and High-Level trigger systems. We are very active in the analysis of CMS collider data, with broad interests including Higgs boson production, QCD, Vector Boson and top quark production, and searches for signatures beyond the Standard Model.

The successful candidate will lead CMS data analysis and pixel detector testing for the CMS tracker upgrade for the high-luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) with Prof. C. Mills. Our analysis program includes measurements of the observed Higgs boson produced in association with a Z boson and decaying to a W boson pair, as well as searches for new heavy Higgs bosons motivated by baryogenesis. Our hardware work uses the Fermilab test beam facility, where we characterize the detector response to high-energy particles under increasingly realistic operating conditions in preparation for the installation of the new detector in 2027. We also have a new effort in on-detector ML-based reconstruction aimed at future collider detectors.

UIC is in downtown Chicago, driving distance from Fermilab. This position will be based at Chicago/Fermilab for the first two years because of the hardware responsibilities, but after that the candidate may remain in the Chicago area or be based at CERN. Day-to-day supervision of PhD students is an integral part of the job. Regular travel, including international travel, is an expected part of the job and includes the opportunity to present work at international conferences.