This project supports a cooperative project by the Dr. Mohammad Alam, Department of Physics, State University of New York at Albany, Albany, New York and Drs. Fazal Aleem and Maqsood Ahmed, Physics Department, Center for High Energy Physics at Lahore, University of Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. They propose to establish the infrastructure necessary for the CHEPL to participate in research in experimental particle physics. They plan to establish a joint Ph.D. program so that students from CHEPL can spend the first three years at their home institution and two years at Albany for two years to complete their theses. One of the faculty members from the center, Maqsood Ahmed has already spent a year training to build Beowulf Class supercomputers needed for data analysis and Monte Carlo simulation. Another graduate student spent more than a year working on his Ph.D. thesis research, and has returned to his home institution to complete his thesis. They also plan to start a program of particle detector construction and testing. The PIs plan to foster a training program, whereby researchers from AHEPL can train personnel at CHEPL so that they could become members of the BaBar Collaboration, of which the AHEPL is already a part. The PIs plan to hold a seminar and workshop in 2005 to educate a group of CHEPL students about the BaBar experiment, BaBar Physics and Analysis, and to offer the opportunity to American graduates and undergraduates to spend summers in Pakistan. Dr. Alam is the Director of the Albany High Energy Physics Group where fourteen students have received Ph.D. in Experimental Particle Physics under his supervision, and six more are currently under his supervision. As a member of the MARK II collaboration at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and CLEO collaboration at the Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR), he has played a leading role in the first observation of several sub-atomic particles charmed baryons and mesons. Prof. Akhtar Mahmood completed his Ph.D. from University at Albany under the supervision of Prof. Alam and has played an important role in the analysis of data leading up to the above discoveries and has an appointment as Adjunct Professor at University at Albany. The Pakistani collaborator Dr. Aleem is also a full professor and has been the Director of the Center for High Energy Physics at Punjab University at Lahore.
Scope and broader Impacts: The proposal will have a major impact on the Albany High Energy Physics group, bringing in top selected students from CHEPL for research at Albany. American students in the group will have the opportunity to pursue research in Pakistan and experience a completely different academic and cultural environment. The program of physics with BaBar involving the study of charmed baryon production is rich in discovery potential. The proposal will have a major impact on the infrastructure, education and training of students and scientists at CHEPL. The program's broader impact is significant from an international perspective. The late Pakistani physicist Prof. Abdus Salam (1979 Nobel Prize Laureate) obtained his undergraduate degree from Punjab University. The PIs plan to seek funding from the Ministry of Science and Technology in Pakistan and to approach other South Asian and Middle-Eastern funding agencies for assisting in the cost of the particle detector construction and testing.
