1st LHC Theory Initiative Fellowships Awarded

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Theory Initiative, a US-based consortium of theoretical physicists aiming to stimulate and cultivate new young talent in anticipation of the opening of the Large Hadron Collider, has awarded $40,000 graduate fellowships, distributed for the first time this year, that will provide selected young theorists with funds to underwrite the costs of their research. Winners of the 2007 LHC Theory Initiative Graduate Fellowship Awards, administered by The Johns Hopkins University and funded by the National Science Foundation, are graduate students Randall Kelly of University of California, San Diego, and Jonathan Walsh, University of Washington. Their research interests include calculations of higher-order corrections both within and beyond the Standard Model particle physics theory and developing new simulation tools to confront with data theoretical models. LHC Theory Initiative Travel Awards, which provide $3000 for LHC-related travel, were presented to Dai De Chang (Case Western Reserve), Wei Gong (University of Oregon), David Krohn (Princeton) and Keith Rehermann (Johns Hopkins). The winners were selected through a national competition. Fred Olness, physics chairman at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, chaired the selection committee. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics in Geneva, Switzerland, is expected to begin operating late this year and to enable scientists to probe deeper into matter than ever before.