131 & 132 Professor David SchmitzIs your current research similar to the work you did as an undergrad or graduate student? I’ve been doing neutrino research, in one form or another, throughout my career, though the types of experiments and physics goals have varied widely. I started out (as an undergraduate) working on an experiment attempting to detect ultra high-energy cosmic neutrinos at the South Pole, then moved to a search for sterile neutrinos through neutrino oscillations in a beam at Fermilab (in graduate school), then to precision studies of how neutrinos interact with matter (as a postdoc), and now I’m back to using neutrino oscillations to test for sterile neutrinos (SBN at Fermilab) and to search for a new source of matter-antimatter asymmetry in particle physics (in the DUNE experiment). So neutrinos has been the common element throughout, but there is no shortage of fascinating questions to try to answer about neutrinos! What is your favorite non-physics way to spend time? I enjoy hiking, biking, running, sailing, camping, and most other activities that involve being outdoors. I also enjoy sports. This is the first year I haven’t played on a softball team during the summer since 2005 (hopefully we can return next year). Being at home so much this summer, I have enjoyed long runs on the Chicago lakefront followed by a refreshing dip in Lake Michigan! If you could switch lives with anyone in the department for a day, who would it be and why? Department Chair Young-Kee Kim, but only if you promise it’s just for a day! I have no idea how she accomplishes as many things as she does, so I’d be curious to find out, but I probably couldn’t handle it for longer than a day. What active measures do you take to ensure that your classroom is an inclusive space for all of your students? First, I always want my students to feel that they are welcome (encouraged even) to reach out to me outside of class. Mostly this is to discuss physics, and office hours are one of my favorite parts of any course, but it absolutely includes discussing any concerns that a student may have relating to the course or any impediments they are experiencing to their ability to learn effectively. This year it will be more important than ever to have opportunities for communication between students and instructors and between students and other students. We’ll try hard to create those opportunities and look forward to your feedback and suggestions as we go. Do you have children/pets/plants that make guest appearances on your zoom calls? Yep, my daughter, Natalie (6) and son, Calvin (4) both love to poke their heads in for two seconds, but then usually they just run away. We also have a cat named Kitty (in our defense, she came with the name), but she doesn’t come around so much to be seen on the video as to just walk on my keyboard and mess things up. Have you picked up or spent more time on any hobbies during the stay-at-home period? I got back to playing a little guitar this summer for the first time in quite a few years (since coming to UChicago, it has mostly just come out of the case for demonstrating standing waves in Physics 133/143!). It turns out that my daughter, who is very into music, is at a perfect age to start singing songs with me when I play, which is just fantastic! You can learn more about Professor Schmitz’s research on the Department of Physics webpage and the Neutrinos at UChicago webpage. Meet the 130s & 140s Professors is a series of mini interviews with professors teaching the general and honors introductory physics sequences, 13100-13300 and 14100-14300 respectively.
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