Student Research Opportunities

We are always interested to hear from prospective research undergraduate students!

PRE-REQUISITES: Your curiosity or interest, and dedication!

If you think your interests are a good fit for joining our research projects at MAL, based on the descriptions on this website and our recent publications and funding resources, please contact us:

• Research projects at the MAL linac facility: Dr. Adriana Banu
  Research in experimental nuclear physics or nuclear astrophysics is a very good venue for undergraduate students to gain research skills necessary not only to pursue academic careers but also for jobs at national laboratories or for the public workforce; the problems are relatively easy to conceptualize, even at the undergraduate level, the experiments are relatively small in scale but require state-of-the-art approaches. Thus, a good undergraduate student can be in control of a significant number of various aspects of a measurement and corresponding data analysis.
   In particular, the research projects in my group aim to teach the undergraduates to perform data analysis based on C++/ROOT programming of complex data streams with large number of parameters, run Monte Carlo simulations using the Geant4 platform, get familiar with the theoretical interpretation of the results, contribute to the publication process and disseminate the scientific findings through poster/oral contributions at various undergraduate research regional/national conferences or symposia, and last but not least, get involved in designing and performing experiments in nuclear astrophysics carried out on-campus at the Madison Accelerator Laboratory or off-campus at university/national laboratories such as Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory (TUNL) at Duke University or the newly operational  Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at Michigan State University.
  My teaching philosophy of mentoring undergraduate research is that at its core undergraduate research is an apprenticeship. I teach the students through example and coaching, and the students learn by doing, with the goal that in the process they develop critical thinking and analytical skills. 

• Research projects at the MAL X-ray imaging facility: Dr. Harold Butner

• Research projects related to operations of the MAL linac and X-ray imaging facilities: Dr. Scottie Pendleton