Rachel Ryan

About Rachel Ryan

I received my PhD in experimental nuclear physics from the University of Washington in March 2019. My graduate career afforded me the opportunity to execute a long term project, from the design stages of the central detector to the analysis of over 40TB of data.The first few years of my graduate study were hardware intensive, focused on building particle detectors, optimizing electronics for detector readout, and learning the intricacies of data acquisition systems. I aided in the design, construction, and commissioning of a time projection chamber (TPC) and improved the electronic resolution of the signal processing chain by a factor of three.I assumed a leading role in four experimental runs at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Northern Switzerland, where data was collected continuously in eight hour shifts. The second half of my PhD was dedicated to analyzing my 40TB dataset. I was awarded an allocation on the computing clusters at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), which I used to run the files through a four stage data pipeline, written primarily in c++ and ROOT. I performed analyses to characterize detector response, with feedback from Monte Carlo simulations, in order to ensure correct interpretation of the data.

Experience

1. Senior Scientist

   Zap Energy

   Jan 2024 — Present

Education

• Colorado School of Mines

  B.S., Engineering Physics

  2007 — 2011

• University of Washington

  Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Experimental Nuclear Physics

  2011 — 2019

Skills

• Python
• Latex
• Microsoft Office
• Mathematica
• Physics
• Science
• Experimentation
• Data Analysis
• Labview
• Solidworks
• Mysql
• C++
• Matlab
• Research
• Version Control Tools
• Statistics