As experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider restarted in spring 2015, UNL physicist Ken Bloom focused on U.S. contributions to the worldwide computing grid that captures the massive data from this research. He was named software and computing manager for the U.S. Compact Muon Solenoid operations program in 2015. The CMS is one of two particle detectors for the LHC in Switzerland. Bloom and UNL’s particle physics team collaborate with scientists worldwide on LHC research that led to discovery of the Higgs boson. U.S. CMS operations coordinates U.S. support for the CMS detector and its software and computing infrastructure. Previously Bloom led the U.S. CMS Tier 2 program and was deputy manager of software and computing. In his current role, he oversees an annual budget of $18 million, which supports staff and funds computing hardware at the Department of Energy’s Fermilab in Illinois, as well as seven Tier 2 computing sites at universities nationwide, including UNL, that store and share data used by physicists worldwide.
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