Nikhef researcher receives Pathfinder grant

14 mei 2015

Nikhef postdoc Chris Tunnell (Dark Matter/XENON) has received a Pathfinder grant. The grant is intended to develop new lines of eScience research that may develop into bigger programs and projects. It was awarded by the Dutch eScience Center and will involve collaborating with one of their eScience engineers for the next year.

The general idea behind the grant is that over the last 10 years there has been an exponential pace of development within the high-tech Big-Data startup world of great tools to solve a wide range of problems. In physics, there is a successful history of pushing technology frontiers. In addition to giving ideas, ideas should be taken as well. To stay innovative, researchers must also look to other domains for better solutions to common problems if they exist.

Tunnell: ”It’s very exciting, because I am the first Nikhef researcher to receive such a grant from the eScience center. Anybody who looks at data from a particle physics experiment must at some point write software to be able to do the data analysis. Beyond physics, a particular passion of mine is constantly working with fellow data analysts to discover how we can best get to our physics results, where ‘best’ includes focusing on the physics, clarity of the method used for the result, and determinism in producing the result say a year later. This typically gets called ‘software sustainability’ outside of physics. Our XENON group within Nikhef has been doing exciting work and producing great scientific results by using innovative eScience technologies. We are thrilled to be working with an organization such as the eScience center that shares the same passion. Our hope is that our collaboration enables interesting directions in both physics and eScience research.”

For more information:
Communications department –  mail – 020-592 5075/2075

Information on the Pathfinder grant on the eScience website