Kevin J. Pedro — Research

As an associate scientist, my current major responsibilities are:

Searching for evidence of strongly-coupled dark matter from hidden sectors in the forms of semivisible jets, emerging jets, and soft unclustered energy patterns.
L3 Machine Learning for Simulation (ML4Sim) Convener: organizing projects to use machine learning for detector simulation.
Developing SONIC (Services for Optimized Network Inference on Coprocessors) for CMSSW.
Developing graph neural networks for fast and accurate clustering with the High Granularity Calorimeter.

Previous or minor responsibilities:

L2 Offline/Computing Upgrade Software Coordinator and Deputy Release Manager: reviewing code, managing workflows and needs of various subdetector groups, integrating pull requests and building releases.
Searching for supersymmetry via production of gluinos and squarks with hadronic final states in the 13 TeV data from the LHC. The latest result, using the full Run 2 dataset, is available at arxiv:1908.04722.
L3 HCAL CMSSW Co-convener: coordinating HCAL software and simulation needs, focusing on the Phase 1 upgrades.
Developing reconstruction algorithms and software for the High Granularity Calorimeter, focusing on computing performance.
Supervising studies of the effects of endcap calorimeter radiation damage on physics performance.

Curriculum vitae: PDF, LaTeX
This uses the LaTeX resume class res.cls. Merged .tex files were generated with flatex.

My CV only lists publications to which I contributed directly. Because the CMS experiment is a collaboration consisting of several thousand scientists and engineers, all publications are authored by the collaboration. Authorship for individual members is based on a certain minimum threshold of contributions to the experiment. My name appears on many papers to which I contributed indirectly, e.g. by developing commonly-used software or taking trigger shifts. A complete list of my publications can be found on

INSPIRE.

Here are a few highlights from my recent research work on the CMS experiment:

I was selected as an LPC Distinguished Researcher for 2018 and 2019.

I was presented with the CMS Offline & Computing Achievement Award in February 2018 for my work coordinating the Phase 2 upgrade software development.

I was presented with the CMS HCAL Detector Award in April 2017 for my work on the Phase 1 software and radiation damage studies.

I attended the SUSY2016 conference in Melbourne, Australia in July 2016 to present results from the hadronic supersymmetry search.

I began a postdoctoral research position at Fermilab in February 2015.

I defended my PhD thesis on November 5, 2014!

To the left, I am pictured standing in front of the CMS experiment. The background for this site is a

Higgs boson candidate event, showing a decay to two Z bosons, where one Z boson decays to two electrons and the other Z boson decays to two muons.