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Jacob Borison selected as US ATLAS Summer Undergraduate Program for Exceptional Researcher (SUPER)

April 12, 2021

Jacob Borison selected as US ATLAS Summer Undergraduate Program for Exceptional Researcher (SUPER)

Borison, J

Jacob Borison, a second-year physics major from Beachwood, Ohio has been selected as one of the US ATLAS Summer Undergraduate Program for Exceptional Researchers (SUPER).  The scholarship is funded by the Department of Energy via Brookhaven National Laboratory. The grant of $5,000 provides for 11 weeks of research in the summer.  Mr. Borison will be working with Professor K.K. Gan in analyzing the optical spectra of vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) arrays. The arrays are used in the optical electronics for the high speed data transmission in the high radiation environment of the pixel detector of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, Geneva Switzerland.

Mr. Borison participates in the fabrication of state-of-the-art optical electronics and collects some of the data. Over the summer he will write the program to automate the fitting and measurements of the multiple peaks in the spectra. Automation in the data analysis is critical because there are 16,000 spectra and each spectrum contains about 10 peaks. Any array identified to have a shift in the peaks will not be installed in the detector to eliminate premature failures. Mr. Borison’s work therefore will ensure that the optical electronics fabricated by Ohio State are of the highest quality and will  operate trouble-free for years to come

Miss Allison Lucas of Cleveland, Ohio was the previous year’s winner. She also worked with Prof. Gan analyzing the LHC data.