Jefferson Lab in the News
HU Wins Awards for Physics Research
Hampton University has captured two multimillion-dollar awards, one to help analyze enormous amounts of data to help understand the universe and the other to possibly help learn if there are more than four dimensions in the universe.
Keith Baker, HU's dean of science, said the awards reaffirm what many researchers already know.
"It affirms our place as being one of the best places in the world to do particle physics," he said.
Key to winning the National Science Foundation award was the science being conducted at Hampton, such as work with the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility and its efforts to build part of the ATLAS particle accelerator.
ATLAS, which is to be located in Switzerland, would be the most powerful accelerator in the world and could help researchers understand superstring theory.
The theory suggests that all particles are made up of extremely tiny, vibrating threads. A different vibration creates a different particle; much like a piano makes a different sound depending on how a chord is struck.
The theory also suggests that the universe is made up of as many as 10 dimensions, instead of just the four people normally think of.
The ability to probe that kind of far-off, beyond-Star-Trek science is what helped earn both awards, Baker said.
The potentially larger award could be formalized within the month. It designates the university as one of four Physics Frontier Centers in the country. Such a designation would provide at least $1 million per year for the next five years. The award is also renewable.
And it goes to a good cause, said Jack Lightbody, executive officer of the physics division of the science foundation.
"The idea is to give groups resources to make breakthroughs," he said, adding that Hampton University has that ability.
"They are a great institution and now, with this, they will be able to make greater contributions."
Nearly 50 universities competed in the first round of frontier funding, and the science foundation selected Hampton along with the universities of Michigan and Chicago, as well as Penn State.
On Hampton's side was the fact it's a Historically Black College or University. The award might bring more underrepresented groups into the field. Baker's goal is to attract other HBCUs into a consortium.
Hampton University was also selected as one of 19 institutions to participate in the International Virtual Data Grid Laboratory, an effort allowing researchers in the United States, Europe and Asia to analyze nuclear physics data.
The $13 million project will deal in huge volumes of data called petabytes, equal to one million gigabytes. That's about the information in 100,000 personal computers. By joining computers in the grid, they could eventually do one thousand trillion calculations in a second.
That project will place Hampton in the company of research giants such as Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, California Institute of Technology and Stanford Linear Accelerator Facility.
"I think a lot of times, we've pushed to say we're just as good as 'X.' What this says to me is that we're beyond that now," Baker said. "We're going to have to be the one to set the standard."