Neubauer to serve on APS Executive Committee for Group on Data Science

Illinois Physics Professor Mark Neubauer has been elected to serve on the executive committee for the American Physical Society (APS) Topical Group on Data Science (GDS). At Illinois, Neubauer is already leading initiatives to apply advances in data science (DS) to his field of high-energy physics and to develop training opportunities for tomorrow’s data-science physicists.

“I am honored to work with my APS colleagues to further advance the goals of the APS GDS to the benefit of the physics and data science communities,” says Neubauer.

Recent years have produced massive strides in applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and more specifically machine learning (ML) to scientific explorations, yielding predictions, models, and data-mining capabilities too challenging to be realized using traditional computing methods. Advances in DS are likewise enabling new capabilities in the field of medicine, in industry, and in national defense. Neubauer notes in his candidate’s statement, “The APS GDS has a leading role to play in collaborative and inclusive activities where the field of physics intersects with ML and DS.”

At Illinois, Neubauer is leading the development of a Physics + DS undergraduate degree program. For this program, he has developed several new courses that provide students with both high-level training and hands-on experience. The new program is currently under review, and Neubauer hopes enrollment for the first physics + DS majors will open within the next year or two.

Neubauer is also an active member of the APS Data Science Education Community of Practice, funded by the APS Innovation Fund and led by the APS GDS. The initiative supports physics educators in integrating data science in their courses.

Within ATLAS, one of the two experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Neubauer’s group made significant contributions to the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012. Neubauer’s current research aims to uncover new phenomena beyond the standard model of particle physics by studying high-energy proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. Neubauer is the principle investigator for the ATLAS Tier-2 cluster at Illinois.

Neubauer co-led the creation of the $15 million Accelerated AI Algorithms for Data-Driven Discovery (A3D3) Institute, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The A3D3 is leading a paradigm shift in the application of real-time AI at scale to accelerate discovery in science and engineering, including in particle physics, multi-messenger astrophysics, and computational neuroscience, by using deep learning algorithms coupled to heterogeneous computing platforms and parallelizable processing architectures.

A decades-long member of the APS, Neubauer has served the society in roles such as chair of the Mitsuyoshi Tanaka Dissertation Award Committee. He was awarded an NSF Career Award in 2011 and was among the recipients of the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

Neubauer earned his doctoral degree in physics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2001 and completed postdoctoral appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at University of California San Diego before he joined the faculty of Illinois Physics and the ATLAS collaboration in 2007.