Ken Bloom

Assistant Professor
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Office: 108 Ferguson Hall
Phone: 402-472-6093
Fax: 402-472-2879

Research:

Experimental high-energy particle physics, at the moment focused on the top quark and its weak interactions. Current projects:

The D0 experiment at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL) in Batavia, IL. This experiment is currently taking data, and will until at least 2009. Students starting soon will do their thesis work here.
The CMS experiment at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. This experiment is in the design and construction phase, and will start taking data in 2007 (we hope).

At UNL, I collaborate on these projects with faculty members Dan Claes, Aaron Dominguez, and Greg Snow. In the past, I've worked on:

The CDF experiment, also at FNAL (1989-1992 and 1997-2004). My final project there was a measurement of the branching fraction for the (highly favored) final state Wb. We published a paper on this in Physical Review Letters. I served as convenor of the lepton-plus-jets subgroup of the top-physics group for a year and a half, and as the leader of the muon-software project for two and a half years. Years earlier, as an undergraduate, I wrote a senior thesis on data taken in 1988-89, a measurement of the cross section for Drell-Yan production of electron pairs with small invariant mass.
The CLEO experiment at Cornell's Laboratory for Elementary-Particle Physics (1992-1997). My PhD thesis was on a complete characterization of the decay B->Dlnu using newfangled neutrino-reconstruction techniques

Teaching:

Fall 2005: Physics 441, Experimental Physics
Fall 2005: Physics 201H, Special Topics in Physics and Astronomy
Spring 2005: Physics 311, Mechanics
Fall 2004: Physics 201H, Special Topics in Physics and Astronomy

Service:

I was recently the chair of the organizing committee for the 2005 Fermilab Users' Meeting, held June 7-8.

Media Appearances:

Slate, August 5-9, 2002 (read all five days!)
The New York Times, July 24, 2001
Science, July 27, 2001