The Opportunity of a Lifetime

Zheng Lu ’26 has an opportunity few undergraduate students get—he’ll be presenting his research at the American Physical Society Global Summit, held this year in California.

 

Since February 2024, Lu has been completing a John S. Toll Research Fellowship with Assistant Professor of Physics Suyog Shrestha, a physicist working on the ATLAS experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. Their research focuses on the Higgs boson, an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics, and whether heavier Higgs bosons can be found. Currently, the Standard Model recognizes 17 fundamental particles, one of which is the Higgs boson.

While there is a hypothesis that suggests heavier Higgs bosons exist, a major obstacle in proving the hypothesis is background noise complicating signal detection. The project Shrestha and Lu are working on uses ATLAS simulation data to study background noise and develop techniques to minimize its interference, enabling clearer detection and analysis of potential signals.

For Lu’s part of the research, he takes data provided by CERN and, using code he created, plots the background points. Those plots are used to better understand the uncertainty of background events; understanding background events is necessary to recognize signals.

“Doing research was awesome,” Lu said. “I learned about particle physics and coding languages, how research projects work, how to work with other people, and how to present my research to other people.”

Lu will present the research he has been conducting with Shrestha at this year’s American Physical Society Global Summit in March. This will not only be Lu’s first time presenting at a professional conference, but his first time attending one too.

“This research has already been done for three years and probably has one or two more years to get some results,” Lu said. “We haven’t gotten any surprising results yet, but with all the new data we have, we get closer to results.”

When Lu arrived on campus, he knew he wanted to conduct research as a way to get hands-on learning.

“I asked every professor in the physics department if they had research for me,” he said.

While his skills were not quite ready to take on research at the time, Shrestha eventually approached Lu about joining his research team.

Research has not been Lu’s only avenue for expanding his experiences at Washington. Lu took advantage of physics tutoring at the Quantitative Skills Center (QSC) during his first years at the College, and became a tutor himself once those tutors graduated.

While at Washington, Lu has never been afraid to ask for help or ask questions, whether that’s during class time or going to his professors’ office hours.

“Emailing questions can be tedious. Sometimes, you don’t even know how to start your question, you just know you did something wrong,” Lu said. “You just want to present your stuff in front of your professors and ask where you went wrong. That kind of conversation is more helpful than email. You also have the library and your classmates that are very helpful as a study group.”

Lu said his professors are always willing to find time that works for them to answer his questions.

“Washington College professors are very nice and helpful. Ask them questions and keep in contact with them,” he said. “They are super useful resources for students.”

Lu is completing the Engineering Dual Degree Program with Washington University, where he hopes to study electrical engineering.

After completing his undergraduate degree, Lu hopes to go to graduate school.

“I want to be close to researchers or go into engineering and do something in factories. I’m not sure yet,” Lu said of his career prospects.

— MacKenzie Brady '21