Oct 19 2015
University of Texas at Arlington physics professor Kaushik De has been elected Fellow of the American Physical Society for his work in developing cloud computing architectures that enabled global collaboration and big data analysis on the ATLAS experiment at CERN.
This is UTA Professor Kaushik De. Credit: University of Texas at Arlington
Dr. De's peers awarded the fellowship based on an extensive review of his contributions through three levels of review. Fellows are limited to not more than one-half percent of the total APS membership.
The honor also recognizes Dr. De's other research exploring physics beyond the current "theory of everything" known as the standard model.
"There are little puzzles that suggest that the standard model is not complete," Dr. De explained. "I look for physics beyond that model. That is why I went into physics."
ATLAS is a particle physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at Switzerland-based CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, where researchers are making new discoveries in the head-on collisions of protons of extraordinarily high energy. CERN is where scientists discovered the Higgs boson or "God particle" in 2012.
Dr. De also led the team developing PanDA, the workload management software that permits the processing of the huge volumes of data generated by ATLAS.
"I am honored to have been named a Fellow of the American Physical Society," Dr. De said. "This is a recognition by my peers that we solved the problem of how to manage the worldwide production and distributed analysis of the big data generated by ATLAS. "
Dr. De's research has generated more than $20 million in research funding for UTA during the past two decades and contributed to the discovery of two fundamental particles, the top quark and the Higgs boson.
He has received numerous honors at UTA, including the 2015 Distinguished Record of Research Award, 2009 Outstanding Research Achievement Award and the 2000-2001 Outstanding Honors Faculty Award.
Morteza Khaledi, dean of the UTA College of Science said: "Dr. De's work has raised the international profile of UTA and has helped position the university as a leader in particle physics research. His contributions are of increasing interest to other areas of science needing to manage big data."
UTA currently hosts the ATLAS SouthWest Tier 2 Center, one of 100 data centers around the world where massive amounts of data from the particle collisions is fed and utilized. Dr. De leads a team of 30 UTA researchers dedicated to the ATLAS project. He recently was named to a supervisory role that manages software and computing issues for U.S. national and university labs participating in the ATLAS project.
Dr. De's research is one of the critical areas of worldwide significance aligned with UTA's focus on data-driven discovery as the University implements its Strategic Plan 2020: Bold Solutions | Global Impact.
Dr. De earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in physics from Hunter College of City University of New York and his master's of science and a doctorate in physics from Brown University. He joined UTA as an assistant professor in 1993. He was appointed professor of physics in 2003 and director of the High Energy Physics Center of Excellence in 2011.
Source: http://www.uta.edu