Michael Begel of Brookhaven Lab's Physics Department Granted Tenure

June 20, 2014

Brookhaven Science Associates (BSA), the company that manages Brookhaven Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy, granted tenure to this scientist and eleven others since 2012. Tenure appointments are made after a rigorous selection procedure culminating in a comprehensive review of each tenure case by the Brookhaven Council, an elected body that advises the Director on matters of concern to the scientific staff. The BSA Science & Technology Steering Committee oversees the tenure process and makes final recommendations to the BSA board. Meet the other scientists. 

Michael Begel of the Physics Department was granted tenure based on his notable contributions to particle physics through the analysis of data from the ATLAS experiment, and his corresponding leadership in applying these data to tests of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) in high-energy collisions and the search for supersymmetry (SUSY) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

"Michael is widely regarded as a top performer in the field," said former Physics Chair Tom Ludlam. "He is seen in the Physics Department as a key figure in Brookhaven Lab's continued intellectual and technical leadership in high energy physics."

Begel earned his Ph.D. at the University of Rochester in 2000 for his work on E706, an experiment at Fermilab to study direct photon production in hadronic collisions. He gained extensive experience in collider physics and became an accomplished researcher on QCD and top quarks in the D0 Experiment at Fermilab, before he joined Brookhaven as an assistant physicist at the end of 2007 and began work on the ATLAS experiment.

He had a profound impact on jet performance and physics in the ATLAS Experiment, first as the coordinator for the Jet Trigger Signature Group from 2010 to 2012, then as the convener for the Jet and Missing Transverse Energy Performance Group from 2012 to 2014. He was the lead author for one of the first measurements of jets soon after the 2010 data were collected, providing tests of QCD at high order in a new energy regime.

Begel also initiated a search for the SUSY partner of the top quark, the "stop." SUSY is one of the leading candidates for physics beyond the Standard Model that could potentially be accessible at the LHC. He devised an analysis technique to search for the stop particle using collision data collected in 2011 at a center of mass energy of 7TeV, and placed one of the earliest limits on the production of stop particles. 

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