Research Experience for Undergraduates at CERN

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

The University of Michigan will conduct an NSF/REU program during the summer of 2001 at CERN. CERN is the European Laboratory for Particle Physics and it straddles the border between Switzerland and France just outside Geneva. It is the foremost facility of its kind in the world, and the Michigan REU Site at CERN is designed to give ten U.S. science and engineering undergraduates the opportunity to participate in an international setting. This program will stress strong minority recruitment through direct contact with HBCU's and other REU programs as well as the deployment of state of the art web based achieving technologies to make the CERN summer lectures available to other U.S. REU sites. At CERN the U.S. students join a select group of international physics students and participate in a variety of educational and social activities. Although the US is not an official member state of CERN, the US students are treated exactly the same as member state students and they can enjoy the benefits of being a CERN Summer Student. Activities include: attending lectures by experts in a variety of fields in physics, engineering and computing; working with and learning from world-renowned physicists; collaborating on multi-national research projects including CMS and ATLAS at the Large Hadron Collider. This unique opportunity not only allows the students to learn fundamental physics in a research environment, but it also gives them the benefit of working in an international setting.