Kurtis Geerlings
Kurtis is currently writing, testing, and using a program called “SpartyJet,” named after the MSU mascot Sparty. SpartyJet is a program that allows scientists to access additional jet finding algorithms at experiments like CDF at Fermilab and ATLAS in Geneva, Switzerland. Without SpartyJet, it is very difficult for a typical scientist to access algorithms that are not built into the experiment’s software framework. A number of people around the world are already using this software for their analyses.
Kurtis’s research involves 95% computer work and the 5% conducting phone and video conferences with other groups to either promote SpartyJet or share results with people. The computer work is in the form of computer programming in C++, writing analysis scripts in ROOT (common framework for physicists), and making plots and graphs to test and compare different features of SpartyJet. This also involves connecting to the LCG (LHC Computing Grid) to download large datasets to MSU, creating SpartyJet files from them, and posting files back on the grid, so researchers around the world can have access to them.
Kurtis explained that the main benefit of participating in research is that you “figure out what it is like to have a job in that specific career… Without research, I would still know the physics, but I would have no idea what a researcher does and what aspects of learning from the classroom are important once you graduate.” However, Kurtis emphasized that the most important reason to do research is that one can, “actually contribute to the advancement of science. That is the reason why people are scientists in the first place, so making an important contribution to the field as an undergraduate is a great feeling!” After graduation, Kurtis will study high energy Physics in graduate school.
