A hectic month

This has been a very hectic month for me. I was at BNL (see previous post) and then I made my first trip to Fermilab. I was there to pick up a prototype module of silicon strip sensors bonded to the FSSR readout chip (see picture below) and bring it to LANL where we plan to do some tests for the PHENIX Forward Vertex upgrade project.

I also spend a weekend in Chicago, also a first. There I met up with an old old friend of mine: Dr. Nikhil Balarkrishnan (he is a real doctor and not a "fake" PhD kind of doctor like me :-). We last met 21 years ago when I was in 5th standard in Cambridge School in New Delhi. His father had to transfer to Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). We stayed in touch through letters for a few years and then lost touch until three years ago when Nikhil tracked me down thanks to Google. In the picture below Nikhil is standing on the right and we are in front of the Bahai temple in Chicago.

After all this hectic travel there was the winter break in which we again travelled. We took a long road trip camping in the Petrified Forest National Park, going to Las Vegas, then camping at Death Valley National Park followed by Grand Canyon and the great meteor crater in Arizona (see picture below). And so you can see that my vacation turned out to be quite hectic too!

And now I am finally back here in Santa Fe writing up my last post for Quantum Diaries. Physics wise this year has been a mixed bag for me. On one hand I haven't done as much data analysis as I would have liked, on the other hand I discovered an interest in hardware for the experiments. Earlier my experience as an experimental physicist had mostly been with software and data analysis. This year I started working on the actual hardware stuff: the silicon sensors, readout chips and more importantly saw a project (Forward Vertex upgrade at PHENIX) from the bottom up. Then there were the usual funding woes. The Run 6 at RHIC was first cancelled (Katrina and the Iraq war) and then might get restarted. On one hand overall physics funding got cut everywhere, but on the other hand our team in the Subatomic Physics group got an internal LANL grant to build a prototype for Forward Vertex upgrade. Still I must say these funding difficulties all the time are very draining and sometimes makes me wonder if there is any future for science in America. The signs are all around: physics funding as a percentage of the GDP has come down by 50% compared to the 70's. I can only hope that next year will be better.

P.S. I shall try to continue with this blog. For details check out my website: www.purwar.net.