Service Statement
Ashutosh V. Kotwal
Duke University
April 15, 2009
In this statement I will describe my service activities in the Physics department, the
University and in the high energy physics community since I was promoted with tenure.
As mentioned in the teaching statement, I was on deputation at Fermilab from Fall 2004
through Fall 2006.
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Departmental Activities
I provide below a summary of my departmental work on various committees.
• I am serving as the chair of the Colloquium Committee since Summer 2007. My
duties include speaker selection, coordination of travel logistics, advertizement and
event organization.
• I am serving on the Graduate Student Admission and Recruitment Committee
since Spring 2008.
• I served as the chair of Tenure Review Committee for Prof. Mark Kruse in Fall
2006.
I have supervised the masters thesis of Mr. Joshua Tuttle, who successfully defended
his thesis in 2005. The results from his thesis were published in Physical Review Letters. I supervised the undergraduate Honors thesis of Mr. Edward Daverman, who
successfully defended his thesis in 2005 and whose results were also published in Physical Review letters. I co-supervised the Ph.D. theses of Dr. Ian Vollrath and Dr. Oliver
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Stelzer-Chilton (both at University of Toronto) in 2006 and 2007 respectively, whose
results were published in Physical Review Letters. I chaired the Ph. D. candidacy examination committee of Mr. Yu Zeng in 2007. I served on the Ph.D. defense committees
of Ms. Amanda Sabourov and Ms. Jianrong Deng, and the senior thesis committees
of Ms. Joyce Coppock, Mr. Richard Wall and Mr. John Barton. I served on the
Ph. D. candidacy examination committees of Mr. Abhijit Mehta, Mr. Ivan Borzenets,
Ms. Yingyi Zhang, and Mr. Wangzhi Zheng. I find these discussions of research with
students very stimulating and gratifying.
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Conference Organization on Campus
The Hadron Collider Physics Symposium was hosted on the Duke campus during
May 22-26, 2006, as a result of the proposal I made in 2002. This symposium has been
a major forum for the presentation of results in collider physics. I was the chair of the
Symposium, serving as the chair of the International Program Committee (IPC) and
the Local Organizing Committee (LOC).
As chair of the IPC I coordinated with the spokespersons and representatives of all
collider physics experiments worldwide, to come up with a very interesting scientific
program. As chair of the LOC I organized the venue and accomodations and coordinated the planning and logistics, including catering, local transportation and venue
management. The Symposium was held in the Bryan Center, with receptions in the
Duke Gardens, Duke Chapel and tours of the local historic sites.
At this meeting, Tevatron results based upon 1 fb−1 of data were be presented, along
with recent measurements made at RHIC, HERA and the B factories. The status and
plans for all LHC experiments were also presented. Included in the conference will be
theoretical reviews relevant to the full range of hadron collider research, and a discussion
of future facilities. The meeting was well-attended by about 100 participants and highly
appreciated by them.
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High Energy Physics Activities
I summarize below my service to the HEP community.
• I am chairing the Fermilab Users Executive Committee during 2008-2009. In this
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role, I am the primary contact person between the Fermilab user community and
the Fermilab management and Congress. I communicate the user-related issues
affecting quality of life at Fermilab, and organize outreach activities. I am also
the lead organizer for the annual visit to ∼ 150 congressional offices by a team
of 40 physicists from the Fermilab, SLAC and US LHC communities. In these
congressional meetings we foster government relations, explain the importance of
basic research and high energy physics, and request funding support at the congressional level to the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and the National
Science Foundation. I am also responsible for the organization of the Annual
Fermilab Users Meeting, a conference highlighting physics results from Fermilab,
future plans, and connections to other international HEP programs. The conference is attended by about 400 physicists and representatives of other laboratories
and funding agencies.
I have made a number of presentations to the Fermilab Board of Directors on
behalf of the user community.
• I was a member of the Department of Energy Selection Committee for the Outstanding Junior Investigator Award in 2008. The charge was to select the recipients
of this award after reviewing ≈65 proposals.
• I am a member of the Fermilab Users Executive Committee for the 2007-2009
term. Members are elected from the high energy physics community following a
public election process.
• I was a member of the Joint DoE/NSF Review Committee of US LHC Software
and Computing Project in 2007. The charge to the committee was to review and
report on the progress, plans and budget of the US ATLAS and US CMS projects.
• I served as a member of the Open Science Grid Council during 2004-2007. The
council is the governing body of all activities of the OSG project, which is funded
by Department of Energy and National Science Foundation. The goal of the OSG
is to create and operate a large, distributed computing grid for interdisciplinary
research through advanced computing.
• I have served as a reviewer for the peer-reviewed HEP journal Physics Letters B.
• I have served as a reviewer of research proposals for US Department of Energy and
Research Corporation.
• I was a member of Fermilab Collider Physics Task Force in 2005. This task force
was convened by the Fermilab Director Dr. Pier Oddone to advise on the long-term
planning of the Tevatron program.
• I have served as a member of the International Advisory Committee for the Hadron
Collider Physics Symposium, from 2004 through 2008.
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