EN World scientists...

[bolen]

PhD in loop quantum gravity here. If you look on the ArXiV you can get my papers. (My user name is my last name)

I am a visiting professor teaching all levels of undergraduate courses. (From non-major courses to Griffith's EM)

 

[bolen]

BA in Physics, and halfway through an AAS in Electronics.

I'm an RF Technician (Practical Scientist? ) at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

How are they handling the layoffs at Fermilab? I heard 200 people are being let go?

Also what is the plan for when the LHC turns on?

 

[WhatGravitas]

LT: Totally agree about the exams. Good luck with school, any idea what field you want to pursue?

Not *that* sure, but my focus (and strength) is definitively skewed towards theoretical and/or quantum/particle-physics. Though I suck at everything concerning too much thermodynamics (but statistical physics is pretty okay, just plain thermodynamics just... don't really click - I can only learn that stuff).

So: I hope to end up with some academic career. I dunno if anybody else will actually hire me, if I keep going into direction!

Cheers, LT.

 

[Pbartender]

How are they handling the layoffs at Fermilab? I heard 200 people are being let go?

It's down to about 160 people (due to people voluntarily retiring, and to any budgetary windfall), the list has already been made up, and management will notify who's what in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, everyone at the lab is taking a mandatory week of unpaid furlough every two months. Unless a miracle happens, that'll continue into the foreseeable and indefinite future.

Also what is the plan for when the LHC turns on?

Hard to say... We had plans for a couple of major projects to replace the Tevatron, the ILC among them, but the funding for those projects was cut so severely that we've had to essentially halt R&D on almost all of them.

If we don't get enough money in future budgets to rebuild our credibility for multinational collaborations, we'd effectively become the world's biggest support facility for CERN and the LHC.

In other words, for the moment, at least, we're up creek. :\

 

[Jdvn1]

Do social scientists count? (hides)

 

[freyar]

Do social scientists count? (hides)

Well, EN World is a friendly place, so we won't hold it against you.

 

[freyar]

PhD in loop quantum gravity here. If you look on the ArXiV you can get my papers. (My user name is my last name)

I am a visiting professor teaching all levels of undergraduate courses. (From non-major courses to Griffith's EM)

Just looked up your papers on SPIRES (you have some interference from another Bolen who's on a big collaboration, though). Didn't think most of those papers looked too loopy; you mostly work with just higher curvature corrections, right? You'd fit in ok with the string theory crowd probably.

 

[stonegod]

Physics and Computer Science dual BS, CS MS and PhD. Assistant Professor going up for tenure this year, doing visualization research with all sorts of interesting data from other (more real?) scientists.

For those still studying physics: Get out now!

 

[bolen]

Just looked up your papers on SPIRES (you have some interference from another Bolen who's on a big collaboration, though). Didn't think most of those papers looked too loopy; you mostly work with just higher curvature corrections, right? You'd fit in ok with the string theory crowd probably.

I am the same guy. I did my masters on the SLD experiment at SLAC.

A paper that I just published with Andrew and Middleton was on cosmology with higher curvature terms but my part of PhD was motivated by loops. I was looking at the difference between group averaging over the Hamiltonian constraint and imposing the constraint directly. I am also interested in the generalized uncertainty principle (which seems to be inherent in any theory of quantum gravity with a minimum length scale). But right now I am neck deep in teaching. I have 12 hours so not a lot of time for research.

 

[Numion]

Research Scientist (that's what my card says, anyway) at the State Research Centre in Finland. Mostly done research in risk and reliability analysis in the nuclear field. Now I'm on a one year contract to Institutt för Energiteknikk in Norway, working on human reliability analysis.