Elementary Particle Physics with CMS and FOCUS

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The Vanderbilt High Energy Group has been involved with three experimental programs: at Fermilab, the study of production and decay of charm and beauty particles (FOCUS and BTeV experiments); at CERN, the study of physics at the energy frontier (the CMS experiment). With considerable experimental expertise developed by the group in the course of the FOCUS and BTeV efforts, for example in such areas as databases and development of fault tolerant electronic triggering, the group is now making significant contributions to CMS in the areas of charged particle tracking and trigger and data acquisition. The CMS experiment will come on line for data taking during the course of this award. In parallel, the group continues to analyze data from FOCUS, which has provided a prolific and significant body of knowledge of charm particles to the scientific community; including measurements of charm particle photoproduction, branching ratios for charm particle decays and charm particle lifetimes. In the area of broader impacts, the group has made significant contributions to Grid Computing and cyberinfrastructure - leading the Vanderbilt campus computing initiative ACCRE and through participation in the national virtual organization Open Science Grid, through research and training in physics and computer science for graduate and undergraduate students, and in education and outreach for high school teachers and students through QuarkNet.