CMS researchers go back to school at J-Term workshop

Jeff Temple, U. Maryland, taught J-Term attendees how to spot noise in the CMS hadron calorimeter.

When Angela Marotta, a first-year graduate student at Texas A&M, learned she could spend a large portion of her winter break in the LHC Physics Center at Fermilab, she jumped at the opportunity.

"We have a lot of tutorials online, but it is so helpful to have someone explain it to you in person," Marotta said.

She and more than 100 other students, post-docs and professors signed up to take a crash course on the CMS experiment at the "EJTERM" (Extended January-term) workshop "Commissioning and Analysis of Early Data with CMS" on Jan. 5-9. From an overview of how the detector works to how to spot noise verses real particles in an analysis, attendees could sign up for more than a dozen different classes, making this year's workshop resemble a university campus.

"When you join a big collaboration like CMS, you need a university to go along with it," said Sudhir Malik, a physicist at the University of Nebraska and convener of the CMS Users Support Group.

This was the fifth time the workshop had been held, but in response to feedback, this time the organizers made 90 percent of the workshop hands-on tutorials (previously it had been 10 percent) and there were extensive pre-workshop online exercises as well so that students arrived well-prepared. For the very first time, attendees also had the opportunity to use real LHC data that was collected just before the holidays.

"We have been doing simulations for 10 years, and real data changes everything," Malik said.

Each attendee completed a mini-analysis and presented their results at the end of the workshop. Even though a physics analysis should take one to two years, Malik said, the mini-analyses help them prepare for the real thing.

Marotta, for example, focused on muon reconstruction and learned how to spot a real muon from a fake one. "I really liked measuring cross-sections," she said.

But for her, the best part about EJTERM was talking to other people and figuring out who to contact for help.

All of the tutorials and mini-analyses are now available on the Web, and so many more new to CMS around the world can benefit from them.

"The support structure in the LPC is very good," Malik said. "If you're doing analysis, this is the place to be."

--Elizabeth Clements

Open house, talk Thursday at seed processing facility

Roads and Grounds' employee Martin Valenzuela works at the seed processing facility in the Fermilab Village. Valenzuela will give a lecture at 1 and 2 p.m. at the facility open house from 1-3:30 p.m. on Thursday.

Fermilab's Roads and Grounds Department and Fermi Natural Areas will host an open house at the seed processing facility between 1-3:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 21.

Visitors to the facility can see the methods used to clean, prepare and store the seeds. Roads and Grounds employee Martin Valenzuela will give a presentation about the laboratory's seed harvest and preservation efforts at 1 p.m. The presentation will be repeated at 2 p.m. Valenzuela will address where the seeds come from, why Roads and Grounds goes through the process of preparing them and where the process ends. Staff members will also explain how specific seed mixes are custom blended and planted in the spring.

The seed processing facility is located at 28 B Sauk Blvd. in the Fermilab Village. Please RSVP to Roads and Grounds at x3303 if you would like to attend.

Personally identifiable information training required

Fermilab takes the job of preventing identity theft and protecting the privacy of employees and users seriously.

This is why all Fermilab employees must complete a training course about protecting personally identifiable information.

The training, which takes about 15 minutes, explains how to handle personally identifiable information, or PII.

At Fermilab protected PII is defined as an individual's name in combination with one or more of a list of items including medical records, social security, passport, visa or personal credit card information. Employees may come across PII in resumes, conference databases or trip reports.

Employees who have already taken the course are not required to take it again. Employees who do not complete the course within the next couple of months be reported as delinquent.

The training is available online, and the Computing Division offered it at the recent annual Computer Security Awareness Day.

To take the training, go to the TRAIN class schedule page and sign in with your employee ID. Select the training category "Computing" and click "Submit."

Next, click on "Protecting Personal Information at Fermilab." Click on the button "Go to Online Test." This will generate an e-mail message with a link to both the test and the training material.

Once you have reviewed the training material, take the online test to complete your requirement.