2019 Annual Report
QuarkNet
Fermilab: University of Chicago
Student Summer Research and Teacher Workshop 2019 Annual Report
The Fermilab/University of Chicago QuarkNet Center sponsored its annual high school student summer research and teacher workshop for its 13th year. The summer research began June 17th and went until July 26th. The three-day teacher workshop was held from July 24th to July 26th. This year’s summer activities included two co-mentor scientists, one mentor teacher, five high school students, (four juniors and one sophomore), and 17 teachers of physics. Teachers from the workshop primarily were from the Chicago metropolitan area, all having taught physics or will be teaching physics this upcoming year. We continue to show variety in gender, age, and years of experience in the classroom.
As always, the summer research was very valuable for the students. Three of the students worked individually, each with their own work group and mentor scientist, while one pair worked together with another. The students contributed to the research projects of the following: Optizmizing Telescope Scheduling with Reinforcement Learning, Website upgrade for GlideinWMS, Machine Learning to identify Strong Lensing with LSST, and 3D Visualization Robotics for the NuMI Target Hall. During their work weeks, the students had the opportunity to attend lectures by research scientists as well as visit many of the experiments. We held weekly meetings during lunch to keep up with the logistics and share the progress on the scientific work. For the teacher workshop, the students prepared presentations on their experiences. All of this went very well and we are extremely proud of their progress and accomplishments.
The teacher workshop was also a great success. Teachers immersed themselves for three days at Fermilab experiencing a Neutrino MINERvA Master Class Workshop, conducted by Shane Woods. They looked at the research projects done by our QuarkNet students, and worked with scientists from Fermilab, including Marco Mambelli, “Computing at Fermilab”, Adom Lyon, “Quantum Computing”, and Anne Norick, “Neutrinos at Fermilab”. The group toured the Grid Computing Center, NuMI Underground (MINOS, MINERvA, NOvA), and visited the Neutrino Remote Operations Center. The Neutrino MINERvA Data Workshop included a number of activities working towards the handling of data from research experiments. Teachers developed plans for implementing higher levels of data collection, interpretation, and explanation.
The Fermilab/University of Chicago QuarkNet Center continues to provide a quality research experience and educational workshop. Both teachers and students continue to express their satisfaction.
Lead Teacher: George Dzuricsko
Scientist Mentor: Angela Fava