My primary research interest is in elementary particle physics (What is Particle Physics?). Particle physicists investigate fundamental questions about the structure and behaviour of the universe. This work provides information about the weak and strong forces (counterparts to gravity and electromagnetism) and offers sensitive probes for new fundamental phenomena. There is growing evidence that discoveries in the next decade may bring to light new physical phenomena that will shed light on important mysteries. For example, the matter asymmetry of the universe tells us two things: there must be large sources of CP violation we have not yet found and there must be baryon number violating processes, which are also not yet observed. Also, the amount of dark matter in the universe is about ten times larger than the amount of baryonic matter, but no dark matter candidates have been observed. An unknown force, often called ``dark energy,'' is forcing the universe apart. These are only three examples.

Experiments in this field take a decade or more to design, build, and carry out. They require the construction of large detectors and the collaboration of hundreds of scientists. I work closely with two other Vanderbilt faculty (Professors Johns and Webster); the activities of our research group are funded by the National Science Foundation. Our current efforts are on two experiments, the FOCUS experiment at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), near Chicago, Illinois, and the CMS experiment at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.

An important aspect of particle physics is the construction of the large detectors necessary to carry out experiments in the field. I was in charge of building the outer muon system for FOCUS, and was the group leader for the BTeV muon system. I am also the principal investigator for a team of particle physicists and computer scientists and engineers that is investigating real-time embedded systems that are high performance, heterogenous, fault-tolerant and fault-adaptive. One specific application that is driving this research and providing a test platform for it is the trigger and data acquisition system for the CMS experiment mentioned above.

Motivated by the huge demands for High Performance Computing and Cyber-Infrastructure in my primary area of research, I have become involved in efforts to develop HPC/CI tools and infrastructure. I have co-lead the development and implementation of ACCRE, a campus wide HPC center that brings together campus researchers in wide variety of disciplines. I am also collaborating on the Open Science Grid (OSG) and International Virtual Data Grid Laboratory (iVDGL) projects. The notion of a globally integrated computation and information resource has been termed the computational data grid, or grid for short. The grid will connect the world's computers, databases, instruments, and people in a seamless web, supporting computation-rich applications such as wide-area high performance computing, real-time widely distributed instruments, and data mining. The OSG and iVDGL projects provide a platform for the development of ``grid-enabled'' applications and for the testing and vetting of grid middleware. I am also collaborating on the development of a Skim Grid Portal.

This research is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants SCI-0121658 and PHY-0600694.