Zachary Marshall
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I am a fifth year graduate student and I've been living in Geneva for the last two and a half years, working on ATLAS at CERN. I am a student at Caltech, and I spent a few weeks of the summer before graduate school working on the CMS detector. At the end of my first year, my advisor (graduate student speak for "boss") moved from Caltech to Columbia University. So, for the last three and a half years I've been working on ATLAS for the Columbia University group- and at the end of all this, I'll go back to Caltech for my graduation. Confused yet? It makes "who do you work for" a pretty complicated question!
Most of the work I have done on ATLAS has been on the simulation software. I've spent a bit of time on the pixel detector and the pixels have been my excuse to hang out in the ATLAS control room during the exciting times we've had. The measurement I am working on (jet physics, like thisbut using the calorimeter) is one of the fastest that can be done- but that doesn't make it easy!!
I'm an avid fan of the Chicago Cubs (Go Cubs!) and California Golden Bears (Go Bears!), and I am a proud member and former coach of the Quarks softball team here at CERN (Go Quarks!). I've also spent far too much of my free time reading about politics and constitutional law and debating policy with equally nerdy friends.