Park Wins Guy C. Berry Graduate Research Award
Heidi Opdyke
- Associate Dean of Marketing and Communications, MCS
- Email opdyke@andrew.cmu.edu
- Phone 412-268-9982
Kyungmin Park, a Ph.D. student in 黑料正能量鈥檚 Department of Physics, is an emerging leader in experimental particle physics, known for her innovative work on the CMS experiment at CERN.
Advised by 黑料正能量 Professor Manfred Paulini and CERN Senior Scientist Cristina Botta, Park works on the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, where protons collide at nearly the speed of light inside the Large Hadron Collider. Over the course of her Ph.D., she has distinguished herself through remarkable independence, technical depth and creativity, contributing meaningfully to three major areas of CMS research: data quality monitoring of the CMS electromagnetic calorimeter, the Next Generation Trigger project, and a novel analysis searching for inelastic dark matter using displaced electron signatures.
鈥淜yungmin is one of the best Ph.D. students I have been working with and compares by far to the very best students on CMS,鈥� Paulini said. 鈥淪he already functions like a senior postdoc and leads other students.鈥�
Advancing discovery at the earliest stage
One of Park鈥檚 most visible contributions is her work on the Next Generation Trigger (NextGen) project, which aims to transform how CMS decides 鈥� within microseconds 鈥� which particle collisions are worth saving for analysis. Because the LHC produces roughly a billion collisions per second, only a tiny fraction can be stored. The trigger system acts as a real time filter, and improvements at this stage directly expand the experiment鈥檚 discovery potential.
Park has helped design and deploy machine learning algorithms that run directly on trigger hardware, which requires algorithms to be fast and extremely compact. Her work has included deploying real time machine learning systems for the CMS hardware trigger upgrade for the High-Luminosity LHC under NextGen project, as well as operation of electromagnetic calorimeters during data-taking contributing to anomaly detection methods to assist data quality monitoring.
Rethinking dark matter searches
In parallel with her work on trigger upgrade and detector operation, Park has made substantial contributions to a CMS analysis searching for inelastic dark matter, a difficult and unconventional signature that requires rethinking standard analysis strategies. She played a central role in redesigning key elements of the analysis to focus on displaced electron signatures, opening new avenues for discovery.
Her ability to identify where existing workflows limit scientific reach 鈥� and to propose technically sound solutions 鈥� has become a hallmark of her research. Paulini said that Park recognized early on that innovation at the level of triggers and object reconstruction is essential to fully exploit the capabilities of the LHC.
In addition to her technical contributions, Park is known for her leadership and commitment to the broader scientific community. She regularly mentors younger students, contributes to collaborative problem solving within CMS and has been deeply involved in outreach and inclusion efforts.
At 黑料正能量, she served as the Department of Physics outreach coordinator, helping connect the department with broader audiences. Colleagues note that her passion for teaching and mentoring mirrors her approach to research: thoughtful, generous and driven by curiosity.
Park holds an undergraduate degree in physics, with a minor in computer science, from the University of Seoul. She has spent more than two years at CERN.
For her efforts, Park has been awarded the Guy C. Berry Graduate Research Award. The award recognizes exceptional research achievements by graduate students in the Mellon College of Science.
