The scheme is NOT YET opened - plan to launch around 1 Feb 2016.

So please do NOT apply yet in case we change the details.

Summer Students - 2016

We are offering around eight places for Summer Students in 2016.

We are looking for high-quality undergraduates who are currently in their 3^rd year studying physics.

Successful applicants will work with our staff at RAL on one of our projects . These include ATLAS, CMS, Dark Matter, LHCb and T2K.

Studentships will be for typically 8 weeks, in the period June to September.

Students will be responsible for their own accommodation and transport, but will be paid of the order of 320 pounds per week to cover their expenses.

Eligibility

Applicants should be in their 3^rd year, studying physics. They must be eligible to work in the UK.

How to Apply

We require completed CVs, along with a Letter of Recommendation from your university tutor, by 19^th February 2015.

• These should be sent separately by email to Jane.Bruffell@stfc.ac.uk.
• CVs should have "2016 PPD Summer Student Application" as the subject of the email. Do not include additional information in your email, but put it in your CV.
• Letters of Recommendation should have "2016 PPD Summer Student Reference" as the subject of the email.

• Name
• Home address
• Correspondence address if different
• Email address
• Contact phone number (s)
• Information about your current study:
  • University
  • Course name
  • Year of study (should be 3^rd year!)
  • Subjects studied
  • Results to date
• Past academic record
  • Schools
  • Dates
  • Subjects studied and results
• Past work experience
• Computing experience
• Interests and hobbies, etc

• Preferred period of Studentship (in June-September 2015) - at the top
• Confirmation that you are eligible to work in UK - at the top
• A statement as to why you are interested in a Studentship

We hope to come to conclusions by first week of March.

There is a certain amount of flexibility in start/end dates and we will try to match selected students to suitable projects.

If you have questions about the process or the programme, contact Stephen.Haywood@stfc.ac.uk

Projects

LHCb

Search for lepton flavour violating decays at LHCb

Searching for lepton-flavour violating decays is a powerful way to search for physics beyond the Standard Model. These searches can be performed with unprecedented sensitivity in a variety of b-hadron decays at LHCb, one of the four main experiments on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The project involves data-analysis of real data and of simulated events in the LHCb detector. The objectives include: the selection of suitable samples of B-meson decays, the estimation of the background, the comparison of data and simulation, the evaluation of the experimental sensitivity.

The student will understand how to undertake a physics analysis and will be exposed to a wide range of computing techniques. He will work in a small team of physicists and will be asked to present the status of his work in regular meetings. This is a challenging project for an 8 weeks placement; however, each objective is in itself a self-contained piece of work, so the student may choose to focus only on a part of the project, depending on his/her own abilities and skills.

Proposed start and end dates of placement: 4 July to 26 August (negotiable)

Student specification: Enthusiastic about particle physics and computing. Basic knowledge of particle physics and good computing skills are required. Knowledge of Root and C++ would be an advantage.

CMS

ATLAS

HLT Tracking Triggers

The ATLAS Trigger system makes fast, real-time, decisions on whether to keep data from interesting proton-proton collision events to be studied later, or discard them. We can only keep about 1 in 100,000 collisions. The High Level Trigger (HLT) includes fast software algorithms that process information from the Inner Detector to find charged particle tracks. Because of the huge number of particles produced in LHC collisions, the Inner Detector tracking software uses a lot of computing power - almost half of the HLT computing resources are used to reconstruct tracks in real time. We are investigating the use of Graphical Process Units (GPU) to speed up the HLT tracking code. You will help with the implementation and optimisation of the HLT tracking software on a GPU using the CUDA programming language. As an upgrade to be commissioned later this year, ATLAS has developed custom-built electronics (called the Fast TracKer, FTK) to find tracks before the start of the HLT. In the second part of the project, you will use the ROOT analysis package to validate new FTK-based triggers that will be put online later this year.

Proposed start and end dates of placement: within 6/6 - 9/9

Student specification: You should have an interest in computing with some experience of programming in C++ or a similar language. Some knowledge of ROOT would be helpful but is not essential.