David Yu
University of Nebraska
Statement
I am happy to stand as a candidate for the Fermilab UEC election. I first came to Fermilab as a Lee Teng intern in 2008, and have been a user/affiliate with the CMS experiment since 2016. I have been resident at Fermilab since 2019, when I participated in the LPC Distinguished Researcher Program during my postdoc with Brown University. Currently, I am a research assistant professor at the University of Nebraska and the coordinator of the CMS Remote Operations Center as part of the LHC Physics Center support staff.
It goes without saying that Fermilab is a precious resource that has been central to my own career as well as the careers of thousands of scientists and engineers at universities and national laboratories. If elected to the UEC, I hope to advocate for users and affiliates in a transformative time for the lab, to promote Fermilab’s mission following the upcoming P5 recommendations, and to help make Fermilab’s science as accessible as possible.
As a member of the LPC staff, and previously as an LPC Distinguished Researcher, I help to administer several programs that bring the USCMS community to Fermilab, including the CMS Remote Operations Center, the CMS Data Analysis School and Hands-On Tutorials, and the USCMS summer undergraduate internship (PURSUE). These programs are critical for USCMS’s participation in the international collaboration, for training of the next generation of particle physicists, and for fostering an inclusive community. Remote shifts, for example, are being increasingly adopted as a more sustainable and inclusive way to run the CMS detector for the next 15 years; in 2023 alone, Fermilab has hosted more than 500 8-hour shifts, mostly taken by graduate students visiting from universities. The continued success of these programs requires that users and affiliates be adequately represented in lab decision making, whether concerning accessibility, technology, village availability, or any other lab resource. I hope to provide such representation as a member of the UEC.
With the upcoming release of the 2023 P5 recommendations, the coming year will be an exciting one for the promotion of HEP’s collective vision and for Fermilab’s role within the community. The annual DC trip organized by the UEC is, of course, central to this advocacy, being our main opportunity to convey to our lawmakers the excitement of our science mission, the value of our technical innovations, and the vast impact of our training programs. I think it’s important that the UEC attract as many participants as possible, especially collaborators from the future collider community.
It’s an honor to be nominated for the UEC, and I hope to have the opportunity to serve the user community!