DeKalb, IL – NIU’s Gretel Mercado, a doctoral student in physics, has won a prestigious graduate student research award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
Gretel Mercado
Mercado, 29, of Buena Park, California, was selected for the highly competitive DOE Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program. She is among 86 recent student awardees from across the country who will conduct research in DOE national laboratories under the program.
“The Graduate Student Research program is a unique opportunity for graduate students to complete their Ph.D. training with teams of world-class experts aiming to answer some of the most challenging problems in fundamental science,” said Harriet Kung, acting director of the DOE Office of Science. “Gaining access to cutting-edge tools for scientific discovery at DOE national laboratories will be instrumental in preparing the next generation of scientific leaders.”
Research at Argonne National Laboratory
The extended residencies at national laboratories provide training and access to high-tech facilities. SCGSR prepares graduate students to enter jobs of critical importance to the DOE mission and secures the nation’s position at the forefront of discovery and innovation.
The award stipend to Mercado will cover travel expenses and $3,000 per month in general living expenses for a one-year period. Mercado is working on her dissertation at the DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory in nearby Lemont.
“I chose to study physics at NIU because of its small-town location in the Midwest, and its proximity to eminent national labs,” Mercado said. “This fellowship is a really special opportunity to work closely with experts in the machine-learning and physics-analysis fields. I also believe that it will be an invaluable and exciting experience to work at a distinguished national laboratory.”
Search for charged Higgs particle
Mercado’s research involves the search for a yet-to-be-discovered charged Higgs particle resulting from experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on the sprawling campus of the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, where Mercado recently conducted research. Discovered in 2012 by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN, the Higgs boson has no electric charge and zero spin, but it could be the first of a larger Higgs family that might include charged Higgs bosons.
“In order to search for a charged Higgs boson in particle collision data, we must be able to distinguish its decay process from all other processes present,” Mercado said. “For the SCGSR award, I will work at Argonne with machine-learning techniques to do just that.”
Working closely with Prof. Adelman
Mercado is advised at NIU by Physics Professor Jahred Adelman, who also conducts research on the Higgs boson at CERN.
“Working with Jahred has been a good experience,” Mercado said. “He runs our research group with lightness and humor, which allows us to be ourselves, all the while with a sense of camaraderie among us. On top of that, he is always encouraging, supportive and readily available to help.”
In turn, Adelman has much confidence in Mercado.
“Gretel is a great student to work with because she really aims to understand the things in front her,” he said. “Some students aim to make as many plots as possible and to code as quickly as possible. Gretel first enjoys stepping back and thinking about what she is doing before forging ahead. I think this will serve her quite well in her time working on complicated machine-learning topics for her dissertation.”
Mercado is the eighth NIU student since 2016 to win the prestigious DOE award.
Media Contact: Tom Parisi
About NIU
Northern Illinois University is a student-centered, nationally recognized public research university, with expertise that benefits its region and spans the globe in a wide variety of fields, including the sciences, humanities, arts, business, engineering, education, health and law. Through its main campus in DeKalb, Illinois, and education centers for students and working professionals in Chicago, Naperville, Oregon and Rockford, NIU offers more than 100 areas of study while serving a diverse and international student body.
