Contact information
| Postal address: | Vrije Universiteit Brussel Dienst ELEM Pleinlaan 2 1050 Brussel Belgium |
| Office: | 0G112 |
| Phone: | (+32) 2 629 32 18 |
| Mobile: | (+41) 76 24 33876 |
| E-mail: | steven.lowette@cern.ch |
| Also on Skype, AIM, GoogleTalk, ICQ. | |
About my research
I am a professor and researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), in the joint Inter-university Institute for High Energies (IIHE). My field of research is experimental particle physics, where I'm working on the CMS experiment at the LHC collider at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland.
My recent and current activities within CMS:
- Search for hadronically decaying stop quarks in 2012 LHC data using multivariate techniques; analysis ongoing.
- 2012: Convener of the CMS SUSY hadronic subgroup, overseeing searches for supersymmetry in all-hadronic final states.
- Search for hadronically decaying stop quarks in 2011 LHC data (public note). In particular: trigger performance, prediction of the ttbar background through embedding techniques,...
- Inclusive SUSY search in the jets+MET final state (publication). In particular: photons for Z->nunu prediction (publication), ttbar background prediction, control of noise and non-collision backgrounds (publication),...
- SiStrip Tracker commissioning leading up and through collisions data-taking in 2009.
- Responsability for the strip tracker commissioning software, and maintenance of the strip tracker software in P5 and our TAC test-stand.
- Core developer of the Physics Analysis Toolkit (PAT), the standard analysis framework for CMS. This framework grew out of the Top Quark Analysis Framework (TQAF), for which I was lead developer up to end 2007.
CMS responsibilities
This is a brief list of my responsibilities within the CMS collaboration:
- Member of the internal CMS Analysis Review Committees for 7 analyses since LHC startup.
- Regular shifts as shift leader, strip tracker Detector-On-Call and strip tracker DAQ-on-call.
- 2011 - May 2013: UCSB representatitive in the CMS Tracker Institution Board.
- 2009 - 2010: Member of the CMS Collaboration Board Advisory Group, ex-officio member of the CMS Collaboration Board.
Curriculum
A very concise version of my curriculum:
- June 2013 onwards: Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
- 2007 - May 2013: Post-doctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in the group of Joseph Incandela.
- 2001-2006: PhD in experimental particle physics, at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. My PhD thesis can be downloaded here. This thesis was awarded the CMS Thesis Award 2007.
- 1999-2003: Teacher's education for physics (for high-school level teaching in Belgium).
- 1997-2001: Bachelor and Master in physics, at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. My Masters dissertation was conducted in the field of Statistical Physics.
Links & pictures
Some work-related links:
- The Compact Muon Solenoid Public Website
- The Compact Muon Solenoid Website: CMS at Work
- My publications on Spires
A few old pictures:
- Signpost research on a Carpathian mountain
- On the Aiguille du Midi, ready for the beauty of the Vallee Blanche
A few links to past and present leisure activities: