UMass Physics Graduate Student Petite Profile:
Nathan Bernard
Undergraduate Institution:
University of California at Los Angeles
Research:
I am a part of the Experimental Particle Physics group at UMass and a member of the ATLAS experiment at CERN where I search for the displaced decays of Z bosons under the Exotics group. Vector like quarks and general gauge mediated supersymmetry are two models that might exhibit such a signature. When couplings in these models become small enough, it gives rise to long-lived particles that will be missed by conventional searches. Maintaining sensitivity to these regions of parameter space requires dedicated searches such as ours. Additionally, I work on the reconstruction of muon segments (the building blocks of an ATLAS muon track) and other muon software.
Recent Books:
The last two I read were "The Man in the High Castle" and "Ubik", both by Philip K. Dick. He is a huge inspiration to my own writing. I love his ability to bring the reader into vivid alternate realities, and then collapse that reality down around them.
Favorite Coffee Shop:
The Esselon Cafe in Hadley. Their maple lattes are great it is a good place for brunch as well.
Favorite Travelling Destinations:
This is a hard question. Being a native Californian, I love beaches. Some of my favorite were in Puerto Rico and Mallorca. I also love Paris. It is a great place to practice my poor French, eat good food, and visit galleries/museums.
Hobbies outside of research:
I really love creative activities. In particular, I enjoy painting, writing fiction, and playing guitar/singing. I think when working in academia, it is important to exercise your creative side.
Favorite Music/Bands:
I like a lot of music from the 80's and 90's: The Cure, Depeche Mode, The Smith's, Pearl Jam, Noir Desir to name a few. I change it up when I am working out and listen to heavier bands such as Megadeth and Pantera to get my adrenaline flowing. I even found that listening to country music when I was living in Europe somehow helped with bouts of homesickness.














