Pierre Savard

Associate Professor and TRIUMF Scientist
Experimental Particle Physics

Office: MP- 803
tel: (416) 978-0764
fax: (416) 978-8221
email: savard at physics.utoronto.ca

Brief CV

 Associate Professor, University of Toronto, TRIUMF Scientist  (2007-)
 Assistant Professor, University of Toronto, TRIUMF Scientist  (2002-2007)
 Research Associate, University of Toronto (2000-2002)
 FCAR Fellow, University of  Toronto (1998-2000)
 Ph.D., Université de Montréal (1998)
 M.Sc., Université de Montréal (1993)
 B.Sc., Université de Sherbrooke (1991)

Research Interests:


 I'm currently convener of the Exotics physics group of the ATLAS Collaboration with Cigdem Issever of Oxford. The ATLAS Detector studies collisions from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. The Exotics group is focused on looking for new physics (e.g. new particles, new forces, new dimensions) beyond the Standard Model, our current theoretical framework. My own research on ATLAS involves searches for new particles decaying to dijets and diphotons. For the longer term, I'm also involved in searches for Dark Matter particles, Extra Dimensions, leptoquarks, and the Higgs boson.  Before that, I spent 10 years on the CDF experiment where I published  papers on exotic physics (W' search, leptoquark and SUSY searches, Large Extra Dimensions), Top Quark Physics (top mass, top production cross section, single top  production), Electroweak Physics (WW production).  On CDF, I was convener of the top and  electroweak physics group at the beginning of Run II with Willis Sakumoto, I was Offline Analysis Coordinator with Avi Yagil, and  in charge of calorimetry reconstruction and simulation.  Before CDF, I worked on  the design and testing of the hadronic endcap calorimeter of ATLAS and on the search for Higgs bosons in the vector boson fusion channel. I've also worked on the SDC experiment (M. Sc.)  and the OPAL experiment as an undergraduate student.

 Some recent talks:

Seminar at Harvard (April 2008, aimed at particle physicists)

CAP Lecture Tour Talk (Winter 2008, aimed at undergraduates)

Colloquium at Carleton University (Fall 2007, aimed at undergrads and grad students)

A talk at the 2006 International Conference on High Energy Physics

Here's a link to a web article summarizing our first Large Extra Dimension (LED) search 
("Get the LED out" is a reference to my favourite band)

Conference proceedings on Higgs and top quark physics

 


Graduate Courses:   PHY2408S (Phenomenology of the Standard Model)
 

Current Students and Research Associates:

 Sebastian Carron (Research Associate)  

 Sing Leung Cheung  (Ph.D. Student, Dijet Resonances on ATLAS)
 Pier-Olivier DeViveiros (Ph.D. Student, Dijet+Etmiss Search on ATLAS)
 Pawan Sandhu (Ph.D. Student)

  Interested in becoming a NSERC Summer Student? Please contact me in January/February

  Also, if you are interested in graduate studies in experimental particle physics, feel  free to contact me.


Previous Students and Research Associates:

Pierre-Hughes Beauchemin (Research Associate, now postdoc at Oxford )
Teresa Spreitzer (Ph.D. Top Quark Production Cross Section, now postdoc  at Simon Fraser University)
 Kostas Kordas (Research Associate, now professor in Greece)
 Reda Tafirout (Research Associate, now Research Scientist at TRIUMF)
 Simon Sabik (Ph.D.  Top Quark Mass, professor at Marianopolis College)
 Cristen Adams  (M.Sc.  Large Extra Dimensions, now PHD student in   atmospheric physics)
 Bernd Stelzer (Ph.D. Single Top Production, now professor at Simon Fraser University)


Selected Publications:

Search for Large Extra Dimensions in the Production of Jets and Missing Transverse Energy in ppbar Collisions at s**(1/2) = 1.96 TeV.
e-Print Archive: hep-ex/0605101

Measurement of the top quark mass using template methods on dilepton events in p anti-p collisions at s**(1/2) = 1.96-TeV.
Published in Phys.Rev.D73:112006,2006
e-Print Archive: hep-ex/0602008

 Top quark mass measurement from dilepton events at CDF II.
Published in Phys.Rev.Lett.96:152002,2006
e-Print Archive: hep-ex/0512070

 Top quark mass measurement using the template method in the lepton + jets channel at CDF II.
Published in Phys.Rev.D73:032003,2006
e-Print Archive: hep-ex/0510048

 Determination of the jet energy scale at the Collider Detector at Fermilab.
e-Print Archive: hep-ex/0510047

 Measurement of the W+ W- production cross section in p anti-p collisions at s**(1/2) =1.96-TeV using dilepton events.
Published in Phys.Rev.Lett.94:211801,2005
e-Print Archive: hep-ex/0501050

 Search for electroweak single top quark production in p anti-p collisions at s**(1/2) = 1.96-TeV.
Published in Phys.Rev.D71:012005,2005
e-Print Archive: hep-ex/0410058

 Measurement of the t anti-t production cross section in p anti-p collisions at s**(1/2) = 1.96-TeV using dilepton events.
Published in Phys.Rev.Lett.93:142001,2004
e-Print Archive: hep-ex/0404036

 Search for a W-prime boson decaying to a top and bottom quark pair in 1.8-TeV p anti-p collisions.
Published in Phys.Rev.Lett.90:081802,2003
e-Print Archive: hep-ex/0209030

 Search for single top quark production in p anti-p collisions at s**(1/2) = 1.8-TeV.
Published in Phys.Rev.D65:091102,2002
e-Print Archive: hep-ex/0110067

Complete publication list from SPIRES database