Partnership in EPP and STEM Ed Research: Particle Tracking at the HL-LHC and in STEM Education

This research project aims to better understand the universe at the smallest scales by probing nature's basic symmetries and their relation to the origin of mass and to simultaneously study how to bring these research concepts and practices to undergraduate physics students in classrooms and research groups. It supports the collaboration of an experimental particle physics (EPP) group and a physics education research (PER) group to achieve this goal. The science of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the physics of the early universe, of the elementary particles and their interactions. The discovery of the Higgs Boson was a major milestone toward understanding the early history of the universe, and physicists are now preparing for the next big leap in discovery potential: the High-Luminosity LHC upgrades (HL-LHC). A relatively small number of physicists are involved in this research, and the diversity of this research community does not reflect the diversity of the U.S. population. To broaden the impact of the research, the investigators will develop and evaluate ways to simultaneously increase the diversity of EPP and broaden participation of students in this cutting-edge research area using PER tools and approaches. As part of this effort, the team will design and evaluate instructional materials to be used both in laboratory courses and with undergraduate researchers. This project involves the collaboration of an experimental particle physics (EPP) group and a physics education research (PER) group to conduct cutting-edge particle physics research and to bring the same cutting-edge research concepts and practices to the population of undergraduate physics students. For the HL-LHC, researchers will attack the CMS upgrade challenge on many fronts -- simulation, engineering and design, testing of hardware, and final construction of devices. A major emphasis will be the development of the track finding firmware. These efforts will make it possible for CMS to extract the maximum physics from the HL-LHC upgrade. Adding tracking to the CMS hardware trigger will improve the sensitivity of the CMS experiment to such diverse topics as searching for physics beyond the Standard Model and measuring precise properties of known particles. In this realm, the researchers will confront fundamental symmetries, the nature of mass, the dimensionality of space, and the cosmological origins of the universe. Simultaneously, the investigators will conduct a controlled and an observational study of educational interventions to bring the EPP research concepts and practices to undergraduate physics students in classrooms and research groups. Building on models of Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs), which have been especially used in biology and some other STEM fields to redesign courses and curricula, the research team will evaluate the efficacy of the CURE framework as applied to physics as a way to bring EPP research concepts and skills to the undergraduate curriculum and to broaden participation in EPP research. This effort will require innovative collaboration between PER and EPP experts to design and evaluate discipline-specific, authentic, educationally sound instructional materials that will directly benefit both the classroom and the LHC. This project is in response to NSF 22-097, "Dear Colleague Letter: Partnership in Experimental Elementary Particle Physics and STEM Education Research to Promote Broadening Research Participation." This award is jointly funded by the Physics Division (PHY) and the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) in the Directorate for STEM Education (EDU). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.