Particle Archives - Physics & Astronomy

Cosmic Collaboration: Students Join Forces to Bring the Invisible to Life

December 16, 2025

Every moment of every day, invisible particles from space pass silently through your body. Traveling to Earth at nearly the speed of light, cosmic rays are everywhere but detectable only through specialized tools. But now—thanks to a partnership that blends science with design—the public can see, hear, and feel the celestial phenomenon firsthand through an immersive exhibit created by interior architecture and physics students.

The multisensory installation—Cosmic Rayn: Seeing the Unseen—is the culmination of a yearlong project led by Assistant Professor of Physics Lawrence Lee and Professor David Matthews from the School of Interior Architecture. Funded by a $1 million National Science Foundation CAREER Award granted to Lee, the project reflects the university’s increasing emphasis on experiential learning, giving students the chance to turn classroom theory into real-world applications.

Read the rest of the story at the College of Architecture and Design website.

First Haslam Family Professorships for Physics

November 24, 2025

Tova Holmes and Yang Zhang have won the department’s first-ever Haslam Family Professorships, an investment that recognizes their past successes and deepens the impact of their future research and teaching.

The university’s Office of the Provost awards these honors in recognition of the recipients’ achievements in research, scholarship, and creative activity. Currently seven faculty members across the Knoxville campus hold these professorships. For both Holmes and Zhang, the five-year appointment began August 1, with the possibility of continuation past 2030.

Holmes is an associate professor who joined the department in 2020. She’s an experimentalist working in elementary particle (high energy) physics and has won a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Early Career Research Award, the university’s first-ever Cottrell Scholar Award, and a Sloan Research Fellowship, among other honors.

Zhang joined the department in 2023. An assistant professor, he’s a theorist in condensed matter physics focusing on quantum materials and artificial intelligence (AI). In 2024 he won the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) Early Career Scientist Prize in Computational Physics.

“This marks the first time (the Haslam Professorships) have been bestowed within our department, an exciting and well-deserved recognition of Tova’s and Yang’s remarkable accomplishments in high energy physics and quantum materials, respectively,” said Professor and Department Head Adrian Del Maestro. “These awards reflect the strong advocacy of Divisional Dean Kate Jones and Executive Dean R.J. Hinde, who worked with the Provost’s Office to implement a key recommendation from our recent Academic Program Review: that we do more to celebrate the outstanding contributions of our junior faculty.”

Small Things with Big Impact

Holmes is particularly gratified about the options the Haslam Professorship provides.

“Having a named professorship is a great honor just on its face, but it comes with extremely flexible funds that I can spend how I think will most benefit my program,” she said. “If a student has an amazing result that I want to make sure they can show off, I can send them to a conference. I can buy new equipment. I can do whatever I think is most useful to my group at the time and that is such a rarity. It lets you do these smaller things that can really have a big impact. It has an impact on your impact.”

Holmes’s research is firmly rooted in established science with an eye on the horizon. Her group works with the Compact Muon Solenoid detector program at CERN, a longstanding experiment that’s a DOE priority. They’re building a new hardware system that will reconstruct, in real time, every track from every particle that comes flying out of the particle collisions at the upgraded High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider, which will turn on in 2029. She’s also collaborating with scientists at Fermilab to study dark matter signatures and has become a leader in the effort to build a muon collider, part of the nation’s particle physics roadmap for the future.

While Holmes’s work dives into the particles and forces that compose and corral matter, Zhang looks at the complexities and promise of new materials, building a broad program across departments.

“Right now, I am most enthusiastic about the rapidly advancing intersection of quantum materials and artificial intelligence,” he said. “My group is developing new computational methods to understand and predict the behavior of complex quantum systems at a scale that was previously impossible.”

His team is particularly focused on moiré materials, which have atomically thin layers that are arranged slightly askew. The interactions between those layers give rise to new properties.

“We’ve discovered that you can create entirely new electronic properties just by twisting two-dimensional semiconductors,” Zhang explained. “This research is fundamentally interdisciplinary and (is) creating a new synergy between computational physics, computer science, and materials science. As I discussed at the Symposium on Machine Learning in Quantum Chemistry held in Knoxville, my work is a perfect example of this. We use high-level physics principles and data from smaller, exact calculations to train advanced machine learning models. These models then learn the complex quantum rules and interactions that govern materials.”

Outpacing the Textbooks

For Holmes and Zhang, thriving research spills over into their classrooms.

“I’m teaching particle physics right now, which is an utter delight,” Holmes said.

When she first joined the faculty, getting back to the classroom helped reacquaint her with concepts she learned as an undergraduate and tie them to her current elementary particle pursuits.

“I am so glad to be at a university where I’m teaching, because it’s my job to constantly refresh and expand my understanding of the underlying elegance of particle physics and the fundamental principles underpinning it,” she said. “I’ve been able to make more connections between my work and other fields in particle physics. I love being able to incorporate ideas from research into classes.”

Zhang’s research also heavily influences what and how his students learn.

“My research and teaching are deeply intertwined,” he said. “This field is moving so quickly that the most exciting topics, whether it’s AI in physics or the discovery of new quantum materials, are not in the standard textbooks yet. I bring these frontier problems directly into the classroom. When my research group develops a new computational tool, I often turn that into a lab module or a final project for my students. This gives them hands-on experience with the exact methods that are driving discovery today. My goal is to not just teach them established physics but to train them as the next generation of computational scientists who are fluent in physics, math, and AI.”

What’s in a Name?

Long before winning a Haslam Professorship, Holmes was aware of what the name meant for education.

“I understand that as governor Bill Haslam did a lot to increase access to the University of Tennessee for the students of the state,” she said. “I really respect that effort and it was something I was impressed by when I arrived in Tennessee; what an incredible set of programs there were to give access to the university to everybody in the state. That’s a thing I’m very pleased to have attached to the name of this.”

For Zhang, the honor is inspiration to keep doing good work.

“This kind of support from the Haslam family is truly transformative,” he said. “A named professorship like this feels like a holistic recognition of one’s overall contributions; not just a single project, but the entirety of my research, teaching, and service to the department and the university. It is less about what you will do and more about an investment in how you work and your potential as a faculty member. That is incredibly meaningful and encouraging.”

Zhang also sees these named professorships as a reflection of the department’s upward trajectory and its collaborative culture.

“I want to thank Adrian Del Maestro and all my colleagues for making this department such an innovative place to be,” he said. “Most of all, this honor is a credit to the brilliant students and postdocs I am lucky to work with every day.”

Vertex 2025 Comes to Rocky Top

September 30, 2025

When powerful particle beams collide, scientists rely on sophisticated detectors to track the paths of new particles created in the process. UT welcomed a group of those scientists to Vertex 2025, the International Workshop on Vertex Detectors.

The Vertex workshop is an annual forum for physicists and engineers who work in high-energy (elementary particle) and nuclear physics. They meet to share ideas on topics like detector technologies, tracking, electronics, and applications in quantum science and other fields. The focus, as the name implies, is on vertex detectors, whose reach extends beyond that of elementary particle physics.

Tracking Where Particles Start

Professor Stefan Spanier is part of UT’s particle physics group and was part of the meeting’s local organizing committee. He explained the role vertex detectors play, not only in fundamental science, but also in technologies that improve lives.

“When particle beams collide, many new particles are created,” he said. “This happens, for example, every 25 nanoseconds at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of CERN near Geneva during its operation. A vertex detector in high-energy physics is a highly accurate instrument designed to track the paths of charged particles immediately after they are produced in a collision. By tracing these paths backward, physicists can determine the origins of the particles, known as vertices.”

“The technology has been adapted for medical imaging, especially in advanced X-ray and nuclear medicine techniques,” he continued. “These detectors offer significant benefits, including high resolution, low radiation exposure, and energy-resolving capabilities.”

A large group of people standing in front of Ayres Hall on the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, campus

The importance of these instruments drew 68 researchers from Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, and the United States to UT’s campus in mid-August for invited talks by field experts and individual contributions.

Physics Graduate Student Jesse Harris was among the students and postdoctoral associates who presented their work in a poster session held at Knoxville’s iconic Sunsphere.

“One of the highlights for me was presenting my poster,” Harris said. “I had the opportunity to discuss my work with experts in the field, receive valuable feedback, and understand how my research contributes to the broader context of high-energy physics at the Compact Muon Solenoid detector. The conversations I had with other students and researchers were incredibly inspiring. It was a fantastic opportunity to connect with the broader scientific community and build new relationships.”

Spanier said the workshop was valuable because scientists and students discussed vertex detector advances in a classroom-like setting, “while also having opportunities for dialogue and idea exchange outside a formal environment,” including plenty of breaks, social activities, a dinner, and a day of excursions that “helped build stronger relationships and encouraged networking.”

Along with Spanier, the organizing committee comprised three scientists from workshop co-sponsor Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL): Mathieu Benoit, Marcel Demarteau, and Oskar Hartbrich. Spanier was quick to point out that the university’s Conference and Event Services staff was essential to the event’s success.

Harris also helped out with conference organization, which proved to be a valuable learning experience for a young scientist.

“I got to see the meticulous planning that goes into organizing a major scientific event,” he explained. “From coordinating with speakers and managing logistics to ensuring a seamless experience for all attendees, it really highlighted the importance of teamwork and attention to detail.”

Spanier said he received very positive feedback about the appeal of the university campus and its facilities. Several participants visited laboratories in the Science and Engineering Building as well as the Department of Nuclear Engineering, in addition to touring ORNL.

The next step for the organizers is putting together the workshop proceedings, which he said “will further promote UT as a vibrant place for research.”

Tova Holmes Featured on BBC Science in Action

June 24, 2025

In light of the June 11 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on a long-term vision for particle physics, Assistant Professor Tova Holmes spoke with the BBC’s Science in Action program to share her insights on a muon collider and what it means for the level of “Higgsiness” in the universe and “the beautiful benefit to society” from fundamental research.

Tova Holmes Wins Simons Foundation Support for Muon Collider Groundwork

May 29, 2025

Assistant Professor Tova Holmes is part of a scientific trio that won $1 million from the Simons Foundation to break new ground in particle physics and train young scientists to explore it.

The proposal is one of only two the foundation funded this year through its Targeted Grants in Mathematics and Physical Sciences program. The two-year grant allows Holmes and her co-investigators to do crucial groundwork for building a muon collider. This next-generation facility is part of the nation’s particle physics roadmap, designed to deliver the energy upgrades needed to untangle mysteries about dark matter and what holds the universe together.

To reach this goal, the grant supports young researchers working at the intersection of experimental particle physics and accelerator physics. Scientists have spent decades developing instruments to study matter’s building blocks. Now those tools are commonly used in fields like medical imaging and making semiconductors. Holmes and her colleagues (Isobel Ojalvo of Princeton University and Karri DiPetrillo of the University of Chicago) want universities to play a bigger role in educating scientists who understand this technology to ensure its progress for science and society.

Catching Muons While You Can

Holmes met Ojalvo and DiPetrillo working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. Revving up to just about the speed of light, the LHC collides two beams of particles at different spots along a circular scientific racetrack. Experiments at the collision points detect and analyze the results, looking for escapees, debris, new particles, and extra dimensions. The LHC was home to breakthrough science confirming the Higgs boson, the particle whose associated field gives other fundamental particles their mass.

For many scientists (including Holmes and her colleagues) the muon collider is the next frontier for particle physics. Typical colliders rely on proton or electron beams. Protons are composite particles and when they collide, only fractions of their energy (carried by quarks and gluons inside them) can be used to make new particles. Like muons, electrons don’t have any smaller constituents, but they are much lighter, making it impossible to accelerate them to high energies. Muon beams offer higher collision energy, producing more data and taking up less space. There’s a catch, however.

Holmes explained that stable particles like electrons and protons are plentiful and easy to manipulate into beams.

“Muons are not like that,” she said. “They’re constantly being produced in our atmosphere but they are not just sitting around. They only live two-millionths of a second … so you need to create them and then harness them before they disappear.”

Creating them isn’t the tough part. Corralling them is.

“If you take a bunch of protons and slam them into a target you can make muons,” Holmes explained. “But trying to gather them up, get them all aligned into a really tight beam and then manipulate, accelerate, focus, (and) collide them: that part hasn’t been done before. That is a really unique challenge.”

Dark Matter and the Fate of the Universe

Muons might be problematic, but Holmes has two targets in mind that make them worth the trouble: understanding dark matter and the life of the universe.

“As soon as people realized that there was dark matter out there they started trying to hypothesize what kind of particles this could be,” she said. “We haven’t been able to build something sensitive enough, and high-energy enough, to access it. I think we have a pretty good shot at that with a muon collider.”

A muon collider could also help explain what the Higgs boson is up to and what that means for the life (and maybe collapse) of the universe. It could mass produce collisions so energetic that they spawn multiple Higgs bosons, with interactions between those identical particles giving scientists a deeper understanding of how it works.

“The Higgs boson seems to be extremely essential to understanding the birth of our universe and possibly its death,” Holmes said.

The Higgs is like a play with three starring roles: The boson, the field, and the potential. Scientists know that the scenery includes a well, with a curve at the bottom.

“When the Higgs field fell into that well, something fundamental changed in the universe,” Holmes said. “Before that, everything was massless. Everything could interact on even footing. All of a sudden, particles acquired different masses. You have preferential interactions. That’s what creates our protons and our neutrons. That’s what creates all of matter.”

The Higgs potential might undo all that.

“Think about potentials as rolling hills,” Holmes explained. “You put something at the top; it rolls down and finds a minimum potential and it settles there.”

In a real landscape there might be another valley below, but if there were a hill between the two, nothing would happen. Unfortunately, Holmes added, “in quantum mechanics there’s a mechanism for tunneling through that hill. If that happens and the Higgs field finds a new potential minimum, it completely disrupts everything about the matter that we have around us. The universe would suddenly and dramatically completely reorder itself.”

Holmes said the beginning and end of the universe are tied to the shape of the Higgs potential and a “multi-Higgs factory is the only way that you can address those questions.”

Next-Gen Accelerator Scientists

The Simons Foundation grant will help Holmes and her co-investigators mentor young scientists who will help draw this factory’s blueprint. All three will take on postdocs and students, and they’ll jointly supervise their work. Specifically, they’ll work at the junction of experimental particle physics and accelerator physics.

“Accelerator physics is based in fundamental physics and is really driving a huge fraction of science today,” she said. “Accelerators have become massively useful to everyone,” across not only different fields of physics but also in the private sector.

While accelerators have their foundation in particle physics, Holmes said most students working in the field don’t get experience working with them because the research is centered primarily at national labs rather than universities.

“What we have is a field that everybody’s relying on that doesn’t have a pipeline of people to become the next generation who are able to create these incredible machines,” she explained. “We have a great program in the U.S. but it doesn’t have the number of people it should.”

The grant will fund students working on challenges in both the particle physics and accelerator aspects of building a muon collider, part of what Holmes calls the “pre-work” in mapping out its future. While the collider itself would takes years and substantial public investment, she said they want to demonstrate that the most technically challenging physical pieces of it are actually possible, with plenty to discover along the way.

“Even before you make the final collider there’s a lot of interest in thinking about what kind of experiments you could set up with that intermediate beam,” she said. “If you look somewhere you’ve never looked before, you don’t know what you’re going to see.”

Holmes and Johnston Win CAS Honors

April 4, 2025

Faculty members Steven Johnston and Tova Holmes at the College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Convocation Award Ceremony on March 31, 2025. — Steve Johnston and Tova Holmes

Each year the College of Arts and Sciences honors faculty members who’ve excelled in teaching, advising, outreach, research and creative activity, and other aspects of the college’s mission. The Department of Physics and Astronomy was well-represented at the annual awards ceremony on March 31, when Assistant Professor Tova Holmes and Bains Professor Steve Johnston were recognized as outstanding researchers.

Understanding Matter’s Foundations

Holmes works in elementary particle physics and is deeply involved with research at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. She started at the ATLAS Experiment and is now part of the CMS Experiment, which sorts through the results of the LHC’s powerful particle collisions to search for new particles (and new physics) using the Compact Muon Solenoid Detector. She’s also turned her attention to the promise of a muon collider to further test the limits of what we understand about the particles and forces that make up all matter. Since joining the physics faculty in 2020, Holmes has won significant support and recognition for her work. In 2022 she was awarded a U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Research Award. In 2024 she won the university’s first-ever Cottrell Award and earlier this year she was named a Sloan Research Fellow. The college presented her with an Excellence in Research and Creative Achievement Award (Early Career.)

Decoding Quantum Materials

While Holmes focuses on particles, Bains Professor Steve Johnston wants to understand how and why quantum materials behave the way they do. As a condensed matter theorist, he applies mathematical models to demystify the complex interactions in quantum systems—those that defy the rules of classical physics models and have the potential to revolutionize science and technology (e.g., superconductivity). Johnston joined the faculty in 2014. Since then he has won a National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2019), a UT Chancellor’s Citation Award for Extraordinary Professional Promise (2020), seen his research featured on the cover of Nature Physics, and played a key role in the university’s successful bid to win NSF funding for the Center for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing (CAMM). Last year the department named him the Elizabeth M. Bains and James A. Bains Professor of Physics and Astronomy, support that enables him to develop and share a collection of codes (called SmoQy) to describe new quantum materials without having to start from scratch. He was honored with the college’s Excellence in Research and Creative Achievement Award (Mid-Career.)

While Holmes and Johnston have both won campus and national honors, the department’s students are equally impressed with their work, having selected Holmes as the Society of Physics Students Research Advisor of the Year and Johnston as the Graduate Physics Society Graduate Teacher of the Year (both in 2023).

In the past 10 years, physics faculty members have won 11 college research and creative achievement awards. Learn more about all the 2025 convocation awardees from the College of Arts and Sciences newsroom.

Tova Holmes Named a Sloan Research Fellow

February 19, 2025

Assistant Professor Tova Holmes has been named a 2025 Sloan Research Fellow. She is one of 126 scholars chosen for this latest cohort, who were selected for the creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments that make them stand out as the next generation of leaders.

Full story from UT News.

Larry Lee Named a Cottrell Scholar

February 12, 2025

Assistant Professor Larry Lee has been named a Cottrell Scholar, the second Cottrell Scholar Award for UT Physics in two years. The prestigious honor goes to early career teacher-scholars in chemistry, physics, and astronomy to support innovative research and academic leadership. Lee is one of 16 scientists selected for the 2025 class. The award will bolster his dedication to helping transfer students succeed at UT and further his research in accelerator physics.

Full story from UT News.

The (Particle) Detectorists

November 26, 2024

Photo of 2024 CPAD Workshop Attendees in front of Ayres Hall — 2024 CPAD Conference Photo

If scientists want to know what makes up matter they have to sort and study the particles that compose it. That effort requires precision detectors. UT Physics and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) hosted the 2024 Coordinating Panel for Advanced Detectors Workshop (CPAD) so physicists could exchange ideas about designing, building, and using these systems to explain how the universe works.

Some 260 participants attended the meeting, which ran November 19-22. With sessions covering topics from fast timing detectors to detector mechanics, they learned what works and what the next steps might look like in particle detection. They also had an opportunity to tour ORNL. Tova Holmes, an assistant professor of physics and a member of the workshop’s local organizing committee, explained why this research matters to everyone—not just scientists.

“Advancing detector technology drives our understanding of the universe,” she said, “but these detectors are also one of our most valuable contributions to society as particle physicists: modern medical scanning technology, nuclear non-proliferation technology; all of these emerge directly from particle physics. The CPAD workshop helps the community consolidate around the most promising ideas and drive them forward.”

In addition to the parallel and plenary sessions, students had the chance to share their research in a poster session, where UT’s Adam Vendrasco won a best poster design honorable mention for his project “Containerization of the Burn in Box Software for the CMS Outer Tracker Upgrade.” As a member of UT’s Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) group, he’s part of a particle physics kinship that marked both loss and celebration during the week-long gathering.

A special memorial session honored Ian Shipsey, a foundational member of the community who passed away suddenly a month before the meeting. Among many contributions across the United States and Europe, Shipsey served as chair of the CMS experiment collaboration board, defined Fermilab’s Large Hadron Collider Physics Center, and was a founding chair of the CPAD organization—helping shape the scientific landscape students like Vendrasco are still exploring.

The workshop also hailed the 50^th anniversary of the Time Projection Chamber (TPC): physicist David Nygren’s innovative design to study tens of thousands of particles from a single collision event. A special plenary session included contributions from Nygren and leaders in the field who continue to use the TPC for discoveries today. A reception at the Sunsphere (with our own Bains Professor Steven Johnston signing on as DJ) was part of the celebration. Not to be outdone, Assistant Professor Larry Lee, Professor Norman Mannella, and local musician Dave Slack helped provide the musical backdrop for a closing banquet at the Knoxville Museum of Art.

Lee, who, like Holmes, invested hours of work in the event as part of the local organizing committee, had no doubts the effort was worth it.

“We were honored to host this important conference here on campus, bringing many of the world’s leaders in particle detection to Knoxville,” he said. “We had the opportunity to show the community the amazing research happening on campus and at ORNL, drive these historic special events, and plan for the future of particle physics. Not only did UT have a seat at the table; the table was in our living room.”

Cottrell Scholar Award for Tova Holmes

November 6, 2024

Tova Holmes is a big fan of tiny particles. She’d like it if you were too. An assistant professor of physics, she’s won a prestigious Cottrell Scholar Award to help her move physics forward while inspiring a larger cheering section for all science.

The Cottrell Scholar Awards recognize outstanding early-career teacher-scholars in chemistry, physics, and astronomy. Holmes is the first UT faculty member to win a Cottrell Award and one of 19 awardees in the 2024 cohort, each of whom receives $120,000 over three years. The goal is to support young scientists with innovative ideas who also have a gift for academic leadership. Each scholar writes a proposal for research and one for education. Holmes, who joined the faculty in 2020, is passionate about both. In 2023 UT’s physics majors selected her as their Research Advisor of the Year. As a Cottrell Scholar, she’ll teach students how to explain their work to a wide audience, as well as explore new ground for her own.

In the Room Where it Happened

In the early hours of July 4, 2012, Holmes, then a sleep-deprived graduate student, managed to get one of three remaining seats in the CERN auditorium to hear the official announcement that the Higgs boson had been discovered. The confirmation of this elusive particle, predicted 50 years earlier, completed the Standard Model of Physics. So on “Higgsdependence Day,” as she called it, Holmes was there, “at the center of discovery.” She was hooked.

Elementary particles are a bit like prime numbers. If you’re dividing a huge number, there comes a point where you can’t break it down any farther because the numbers left are indivisible. Atoms are sort of the same. Dividing an atom into its most minute components and figuring out how they work (or if there are more of them) takes scientists down to the bedrock of matter and tells them something about the universe, most of which is still a mystery. While the Standard Model organizes all the particles and forces governing matter, Holmes has set her sights on one: the muon.

Making Custom Particles

Digging down to matter’s foundations involves building high-energy colliders that accelerate beams of particles and then smash them together. Physicists wade through the aftermath, measuring the location and energies of known particles and looking for new ones. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN has been remarkably successful at this, as evidenced by the Higgs discovery. But what comes next?

The LHC is a 27-kilometer underground ring crossing the French-Swiss border, hemmed in by mountains and Lake Geneva. To take the science farther and work at higher energies, the ring would have to be bigger. Holmes, however, is among the physicists who see energy, rather than real estate, as the solution. The muon is the key.

Muons are 200 times heavier than electrons and offer more energy for collisions. They also come with challenges. Particles in collision beams have to be aligned and headed in the same direction. For that to work, every collider up until now has used stable particles, like the protons at the LHC. Muons are more complicated. First, they have to be created by sending protons through a scientific obstacle course that begins with a linear accelerator and ultimately creates particles called pions, which decay into muons.

“They’re bespoke particles,” Holmes said. “You have to make them because they’re not sitting around. Then you have to deal with them in whatever state they’re in. (And) they only live about two microseconds.”

Before the muons decay, scientists have to compress them to fit into a beam, point them in the same direction, accelerate them, and finally collide them.

“That’s going to make things tricky,” Holmes said.

She’s is part of a growing group with a plan to navigate this tricky territory. Using magnets to collect the muons, they can slow them down by shooting them into a material, then accelerate them in one direction to align them. This is only one part of a muon collider, but by showing proof of principle, they move closer to making the technology a reality.

Their timing couldn’t be better.

The US particle physics community sees the muon collider as a centerpiece of the field’s future, as outlined in the scientific roadmap they announced last year. The Cottrell Award helps support Holmes’s postdocs and students so they can contribute to this work.

“What they’re currently doing is muddling their way through some pretty rough code that’s sort of been borrowed and adapted, and trying to squeeze information out of it about what kind of physics we can do,” she said. “We need to (make) that a more streamlined process. The proposal is really about engaging in that.”

Department Head Adrian Del Maestro said Holmes “is unique in her ability to inspire and challenge students to seek answers to some of the most fundamental problems in physics. She is an international leader in envisioning the future of the facilities needed to discover new particles, making the University of Tennessee a ‘theory of everything’ school.”

Getting the Message Across

Holmes’s students have joined a field that’s highly collaborative. She said creative thinking and effective communications are crucial in research areas like hers that involve thousands of scientists from across the world. Yet she’s seen that students typically don’t get the chance to develop those skills in the mainstream physics curriculum. Not only does this discourage students drawn to those ideas from majoring in physics, it also leaves physics graduates at a disadvantage.

“You’re not going to be good in my field if you can’t communicate to nearby experts,” she explained, adding that half of success in particle physics is explaining how what you learn is useful to others.

“(Communication) is not an afterthought: it’s a fundamental requirement,” she said. “My field’s not the only one that’s like that.”

Holmes was impressed by Professor David Matthew’s architecture and interior design students as she watched them brainstorm, refine, and work together to solve problems. She took notice of Senior Lecturer Sean Lindsay’s innovative course using science fiction to teach physics. Both also use a grading system outside the traditional instructor-assigned scores, encouraging students to self-assess and review one another’s work. She’s brought Matthews and Lindsay on board as collaborators as she uses her Cottrell Award to develop a special topics course.

Students will learn the basics of strong visual, written, and spoken communications. They’ll study design elements to make compelling graphics for their data and practice translating technical concepts into simpler language. Their final project will be convincing a non-scientist to see the value in science.

Holmes knows first-hand that discovery must be shared if it’s going to be appreciated. She’s been quoted in The New York Times, Nature, and Science about the possibility of a muon collider and what it means inside and outside the research community.

“If I want to get a multi-billion-dollar machine built in the US, I need to be able to communicate why that’s something that’s valuable to everybody in the US,” she said.

A Career Well Spent

Holmes is excited to broaden her own collaborations now that she’s part of the Cottrell Scholars community. Current and former scholars meet each year and build connections outside their typical research areas. While she has a scientist’s natural curiosity and open mind, her hope is that particle physics—driven by a new muon collider—will keep her occupied for the foreseeable future.

“That is my dream,” she said. “I think that would be a career well spent.”