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College of Liberal Arts and Sciences University of Florida

Graduate Student Awards

Pictures, left to right: Davis Chen, Shubhagata Bhaumik, and Brinden Carlson.

Spring 2025 CLAS Dissertation Fellowship

Each fall the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) awards approximately 15 one-semester dissertation fellowships to deserving graduate students whose projects are judged by the selection committee to be highly meritorious. Successful applicants receive a stipend and paid tuition during the following spring semester.

Two physics graduate students have been selected to receive this prestigious award for Spring 2025. Davis Chen (Dominique Laroche, advisor) and Shubhagata Bhaumik, (Imre Bartos, advisor) have each been awarded the CLAS Dissertation Fellowship funded by the Charles Vincent and Heidi Cole McLaughlin Endowment in the amount of $8,000.

Universities Research Association’s Visiting Scholars Program

Physics graduate student Brinden Carlson has been selected for the Universities Research Association’s (URA) Visiting Scholars Program (VSP). The VSP award will support Brinden at Fermilab for two months during the fall of 2024.

Brinden is working on the Short Baseline Near Detector (SBND) neutrino detector with his adviser, Professor Heather Ray. Measurements of neutrino parameters require a precise understanding of neutrino-nucleus interactions. SBND is expected to collect the largest neutrino-argon interaction dataset ever recorded, around 10 million interactions. Brinden is adapting new mathematical methods for cross-section analysis at SBND in order to advance the pursuit of high-precision neutrino-nucleus interaction data. Central to his work is the implementation of blockwise unfolding, a method crucial for evaluating covariances among distinct cross-section measurements, to provide a comprehensive accounting of correlated uncertainties. Brinden’s project, supported by the URA VSP, will standardize a new era of data exploration, significantly enhancing the systematic tools used to evaluate neutrino interactions, and improving our understanding of the neutrino.

The URA is a consortium of over 94 research universities in the United States, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Its Visiting Scholars Program supports students, faculty, and postdocs from the member universities to work at Fermilab for up to one year.