Dr. Heather Ray is a new professor here in the Physics Department who is doing experimental work in the field of neutrino particle physics. She tells us her story in an interview this month, covering specific details about her work, as well as her future plans:



UPNEWS: "Hello, Dr. Ray, I hear you are the new professor here in the Physics Department, how long have you been here and what were you doing just before you came here?”

Dr. Ray: "I have been here for a few months. I just started this semester when before I was working for Los Alamos National Laboratory at Fermilab in Illinois for my post doc."

UPNEWS: "Well, how do you like the environment here? Is it vastly different than where you are coming from?"

Dr. Ray: "Where I was coming from, I was working in a government lab whereas here I am working in a full academic environment. There is to some degree a displacement going from a lab to a complete academic environment, so a comparison can not really be made between the two. Though there was access to the local universities at Fermilab, it is nothing like working in a community devoted to academics. "



UPNEWS: "What are you currently doing as a professor, and what will you being doing next semester?"

Dr. Ray: "Before I was employed here, UF only had Pierre Ramond doing neutrino physics, which was very theoretical. I brought the experimental field for neutrino physics with my experience as a researcher at Fermilab. For right now, I will be leading the discussion for the honors "Intro to physics" sequence. I had fellowship in graduate school and did not have to teach students, so now I am gaining experience in this regard."

UPNEWS: "What does your current research entail?"

Dr. Ray: "I am still collecting data from the Booster Neutrino Experiment, MiniBooNE, which is on a second run. The goal of the experiment is to find neutrino oscillations - basically looking for physics beyond the Standard Model. I am also currently working on a proposal for my own neutrino experiment located at Spallation Neutron Source, Oak Ridge Laboratory where we will be looking for oscillations from muon antineutrinos to electron antineutrinos on the mass scale relevant for astrophysical processes.

UPNEWS: "How did you come to be interested physics? What do you now look forward to the most in physics?"

Dr. Ray: "I had originally planned to study computer animation, but after going through the course sequence for that field, I decided that it did not hold my interest at all. So, while completing the general education requirements for a degree, I took a course in philosophy on the history of science. The topics in physics "clicked" with me and I then decided to switch to doing physics. I had always done well in math, however it was not until I was exposed to the topics of physics, particularly modern physics, that I discovered I had proclivity for it and found it most intuitive. I am looking forward to doing my own experiment which is much unlike any other. Being able to work on something new and exciting, something that is truly mysterious and beautiful is what I have always looked for in physics – not something like just trying to find another significant digit."

UPNEWS:"Is there any advice that you can give to current students interested in physics?"

Dr. Ray:"Make sure you try out doing some research with a few different people as an undergraduate to find out what you are interested in doing. When applying for graduate school be sure to realize that your department determines the topic of your thesis within your field. Students should realize this and spend an afternoon calling professors who do the physics they are interested in with very pointed questions about the work they would be involved in as an incoming graduate student. While a university may have someone specializing in the general area you’re interested in (i.e. neutrino physics), that person may only do one type of measurement (i.e. oscillation searches), while you might want to do a different measurement (cross section measurement). You cannot choose a graduate school based on its having someone in the general area you’re interested in, because you may end up performing a measurement that holds no interest for you.