Nhan V. Tran

Nhan V. Tran
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, CMS Center
Email: ntran@fnal.gov
Phone: 267-629-9892
Web: http://home.fnal.gov/∼ntran
Address:
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Wilson Hall, MS205, P.O. Box 500
Batavia, IL, 60510
Education
Ph.D., Physics
Johns Hopkins University, September 2005 - September 2011
B.S., Physics
Princeton University, September 2001 - June 2005
Professional Experience
• Postdoctoral Research Associate, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, CMS Collaboration, 2011 - present
• Research Assistant, Johns Hopkins University, CMS Collaboration, 2006 - 2011
Dissertation: ”Angles and Daemons: Spin correlations at the LHC”
Advisor: Professor Andrei Gritsan
• Undergraduate Research Assistant, Princeton University, Belle Collaboration - Summer 2002 &
2003
Research Experience
[Physics Analysis]
December 2013 - present
Co-editor for CMS Run I legacy paper on searches for high mass Standard Model-like Higgs
bosons; this analysis is targeting the combination of several final states where the Higgs decays
to a pair of W or Z bosons
July 2012 - September 2014
Leader of CMS analyses of W W resonances in the semi-leptonic channel where the hadronically
decaying W boson is reconstructed in a single jet; searches feature the development of a novel
tagger of merged W boson jets and look for a SM Higgs boson benchmark signal model, beyond
the SM Higgs models where a heavy Higgs mixes with the 126 GeV boson and massive Graviton models; the analyses are related to CMS SM diboson WW measurements and searches for
anomalous triple gauge couplings
July 2008 - present
Phenomenological works on the spin and parity of single-produced resonances; analytic calculations for signal hypothesis separation and coupling measurement for Higgs boson candidates in
W W , ZZ and γγ final states; development of a Monte Carlo generator (JHU generator) for spinparity studies; coupling measurement in final states with interference between ZZ/Zγ/γγ → 4l in
both signal and background processes
January 2012 - March 2013
Co-leader of analysis measuring jet mass in dijet and vector boson plus jet events; a first systematic
study of jet substructure grooming algorithms for various jet radii in CMS
July 2008 - November 2012
Study on the mass and spin-parity of the Higgs boson candidate in decays to Z boson pairs at
CMS; angular distributions of the four lepton final states show data is consistent with a pure scalar
hypothesis and disfavors a pure pseudoscalar hypothesis
March 2011 - July 2012
Search for the Standard Model Higgs boson in the decay H → ZZ → 4l at CMS; statistical interpretation and computation of confidence limits, mitigation of backgrounds using a multivariate
kinematic discriminant and inputs to the combination with other Higgs final states.
March 2010 - June 2011
Z boson dilepton differential analyses at CMS; measurement of forward-backward asymmetry
in the Drell-Yan process; measurement of sin2 θW in the Drell-Yan process via a novel analytic
approach
[Event Reconstruction and Object Performance]
January 2014 - present
Phenomenological studies on pileup mitigation techniques for the future LHC runs (PUPPI) in increasingly challenging pileup environments and then propagated to studies within CMS, studies
of advanced pileup mitigation algorithms for jets, missing energy and leptons
November 2013 - present
Phenomenological studies related to novel jet substructure techniques within the BOOST2013
working group, the understanding of jet structure observables and their correlations as it relates
to the difference between quark, gluon and W jets
July 2012 - present
Development of novel jet substructure techniques for tagging W bosons including the first systematic study of jet mass and jet substructure observables; detailed comparison between data and
simulation; and implementation of a procedure for data-to-simulation corrections
October 2012 - December 2014
Co-leader of the CMS sub-group on algorithms and reconstruction in the jet and missing transverse energy physics object group; coordination of new algorithms, in particular concerned with
mitigation of pileup and jet substructure
[Detector Hardware and Performance]
March 2013 - present
Development of the track trigger hardware concept in CMS; development and studies of fast
pattern recognition associative memory chip technology for low latency track identification for
the CMS level-1 trigger system
July 2006 - November 2009
Tracker alignment and tracking validation at CMS; commissioning of the CMS detector with cosmic ray data; developer for track-based alignment, forward pixel survey, and application of survey constraint; track parameter resolution studies with cosmic ray data
Awards & Grants
LHC Physics Center (LPC) Distinguished Researcher, 2014
Universities Research Association (URA) Visiting Scholars Program at Fermilab, Fall 2009
National Science Foundation (NSF) US LHC Graduate Student Support Award, 2009
Selected Conference, Workshop and Seminar Presentations
[Invited Conference Presentations]
”BOOST 2014: Experimental Summary”, BOOST 2014 Conference, London, England, August 2014.
[Seminars and Colloquia]
”The Evolution of Jets at the LHC: jets, subjets, particles”, Fermilab Wine and Cheese Seminar,
Batavia, IL, USA, April 2014.
”The Future of Boosted Jets at the LHC: jets, subjets, particles”, Rutgers University High Energy
Physics Seminar, New Brunswick, NJ, USA, April 2014.
”Jet substructure at the LHC”, Michigan State University High Energy Physics Seminar, Lansing, MI,
USA, October 2013.
”Discovery of the Higgs boson”, University of Missouri KC Physics Colloquium, Kansas City, MO,
USA, April 2013.
”Jet substructure at CMS: current status and future perspectives”, Northwestern University High
Energy Physics Seminar. Evanston, IL, USA, April 2013.
”Discovery of the Higgs Boson (or something like it)”, Missouri Science and Technology University
Physics Department Colloquium. Rolla, MO, USA, October 2012.
”Spin determination of single-produced resonances at the LHC”, Northwestern University High
Energy Physics Seminar. Evanston, IL, USA, April 2010.
[Workshop and Conference Presentations]
”Pileup Per Particle Identification”, Workshop on Mitigating Pileup Effects at the LHC, Geneva,
Switzerland, May 2014.
”Performance and applications of jet substructure in SUSY searches at the LHC”, SUSY at the Near
Energy Frontier, Batavia, IL, USA, November 2013.
”H → b¯b and H → V V in boosted topologies at CMS”, BOOST 2013, Flagstaff, AZ, USA, August
2013.
”Jet structure at hadron colliders”, Lepton-Photon 2013, San Francisco, CA, USA, June 2013.
”Boosted Object Tagging in Higgs, Exotics and Other Hadronic Final State Searches”, US ATLAS
Hadronic Final State Analysis Forum. Chicago, IL, USA, December 2012.
”Jet Substructure and Top Tagging at CMS”, Chicago 2012 Workshop on LHC Physics. Chicago,
IL, USA, November 2012.
”Jet Mass in Dijet and Vector Boson Plus Jet Events at CMS”, BOOST 2012 Workshop. Valencia,
Spain, July 2012.
”Combined Results of Standard Model Higgs Searches at CMS”, MCTP Higgs Symposium. Ann
Arbor, MI, USA, April 2012.
”Higgs Properties at the LHC”, MCTP Higgs Symposium. Ann Arbor, MI, USA, April 2012.
”MELA: Spin, parity, and couplings of a Higgs-like resonance”, Implications of LHC Results for TeVscale Physics. Geneva, Switzerland, March 2012.
”Analysis of Z → l+ l− polarization at CMS”, Recontres de Moriond, EW. La Thuile, Italy, March 2011.
”Model-independent spin and coupling determination of Higgs-like resonances”, Higgs Hunting
Workshop. Orsay, France, July 2010.
”Spin determination of single-produced resonances at the LHC”, ICHEP 2010. Paris, France, July
2010.
”Spin determination of single-produced resonances at the LHC”, Pheno 2010 Symposium. Madison, WI, USA, May 2010.
”CMS Tracker Alignment and Implications on Physics Performance”, Physics at the LHC Conference. Split, Croatia, October 2008.
Selected Publications
[Outside of the CMS collaboration]
T. Liu, G. Deptuch, J. Hoff, S. Jindariani, S. Joshi, J. Olsen, N. Tran, M. Trimpl, “Design and Testing of
the First 2D Prototype Vertically Integrated Pattern Recognition Associative Memory”, TWEPP2014
conference proceedings (submitted to JINST).
D. Bertolini, M. Low, P. Harris, N. Tran, ”Pileup Per Particle Identification”, JHEP 10 (2014) 059.
I. Anderson et al., ”Constraining anomalous HVV interactions at proton and lepton colliders”,
Phys. Rev. D 89, 035007 (2014).
A. Altheimer, A. Arce, L. Asquith, J. Backus Mayes, E. Bergeaas Kuutmann, J. Berger, D. Bjergaard
and L. Bryngemark et al., “Boosted objects and jet substructure at the LHC. Report of BOOST2012,
held at IFIC Valencia, 23rd-27th of July 2012,” Eur. Phys. J. C 74, 2792 (2014) [arXiv:1311.2708 [hepex]].
Y. Chen, N. Tran and R. Vega-Morales, ”Scrutinizing the Higgs Signal and Background in the 2e2µ
Golden Channel,” JHEP 01 (2013) 182.
S. Bolognesi et al., ”On the spin and parity of a single-produced resonance at the LHC,” Phys. Rev.
D86, 095031 (2012).
Y. Gao et al., ”Spin determination of single-produced resonances at hadron colliders”, Phys. Rev.
D. 81, 075022 (2010).
[Within the CMS collaboration]
CMS Collaboration, “Identification techniques for highly boosted W bosons that decay into hadrons”,
arXiv:1410.4227 [hep-ex] (submitted to JHEP).
CMS Collaboration, ”Study of Pileup Removal Algorithms for Jets”, CMS PAS JME-14-001 (2014).
CMS Collaboration, ”Search for new resonances decaying to WW → `νq q¯0 in the final state with
a lepton, missing transverse energy, and single reconstructed jet”, CMS PAS EXO-12-021 (2013).
CMS Collaboration,
”Search for a Standard Model-like Higgs boson decaying into WW → `νq q¯0 in
√
pp collisions at s = 8 TeV”, CMS PAS HIG-13-008 (2013).
CMS Collaboration, ”Study of jet mass in dijet and W/Z + jet events,” JHEP 05 (2013) 090.
CMS Collaboration, ”Study of the mass and spin-parity of the Higgs boson candidate via its decays to Z boson pairs,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 110 (2013) 081803.
CMS Collaboration,
”Combined results of searches for the standard model Higgs boson in pp
√
collisions at s = 7 TeV”, Phys. Lett. B 710, 26-48 (2012).
CMS Collaboration, ”Search
√ for the Standard Model Higgs Boson in the Decay Channel H →
ZZ → 4l in pp Collisions at s = 7 TeV”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 111804 (2012).
CMS Collaboration, ”Measurement of the weak mixing angle with the Drell-Yan process in protonproton collisions at the LHC”, Phys. Rev. D 84, 112002 (2011).
CMS Collaboration, ”Alignment of the CMS silicon tracker during commissioning with cosmic
rays”, 2010 JINST 5 T03009.
CMS Collaboration, ”Commissioning and performance of the CMS pixel tracker with cosmic ray
muons”, 2010 JINST 5 T03007.
CMS Collaboration, ”Commissioning and performance of the CMS silicon strip tracker with cosmic
ray muons”, 2010 JINST 5 T03008.
CMS Collaboration, ”Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in cosmic-ray events”, 2010 JINST
5 T03022.
W. Adam et al., ”CMS Tracker Alignment at the Integration Facility”, JINST 4 T07001, 2009.
Teaching & Mentoring Experience
Supervisory role for 3 doctoral students; advisory role 3 doctoral students; supervisory role for 1
Masters and 1 high school student
”HATS (Hands-on Advanced Tutorial Session) @ LPC: Jet Substructure”, Fermilab, Batavia, IL, USA,
May 2013 and June 2014.
”CMS Data Analysis School, Jets and Dijet resonance searches”, Fermilab, Batavia, IL, USA, January 2014.
”CMS Data Analysis School, Tracking”, Fermilab, Batavia, IL, USA, January 2013.
”US CMS EJ Term, Alignment”, Fermilab, Batavia, IL, USA, January 2010.
Teaching Assistant: General Physics II, Johns Hopkins University, Spring 2006
Teaching Assistant, General Physics I, Johns Hopkins University, Fall 2005
Committees & Services
Local Organizing Committee, BOOST 2015 Conference, Chicago, IL, USA
Referee, Int. J. Mod. Phys. A. (IJMPA), 1 paper, 2014.
Referee, Physics Review Letters, 1 paper, 2014.
CMS Analysis Review Committee (ARC), 6 analyses beginning in 2013 (1 chair).
LHC Physics Center (LPC) Topic of the Week committee, 2012 - present
Vice President, JHU Physics and Astromony Graduate Students (PAGS), 2006-2007
Outreach
Guide for ”Saturday Morning Physics”, Fermilab, Batavia, IL, USA, 2013 - present
”USCMS Got a Minute: Finding the best collisions”, Fermilab Today, July 22, 2014.
”New boson’s mirror image looks like the Higgs”, CERN Courier, Jan/Feb 2013.
”Weinberg’s Angle”, Fermilab Today, November 11, 2011.
”The Science of the Large Hadron Collider”, USA Science and Engineering Festival, Washington
D.C., USA, October 2010.
”Particle Physics, The Mysteries of the Universe, and the LHC”, Central Bucks West High School,
Doylestown, PA, USA, December 2009.
Johns Hopkins Physics Fair, Baltimore, MD, USA, April 2006 and April 2007.
October 31, 2014