toback is quick to point out that texas a&ms history with the cdf experiment is far more extensive than his involvement given that it was co-founded in 1980 in part by texas a&m physicists peter mcintyre and robert webb texas a&m has had a continuous presence in the collaboration since its inception including four additional physicists toback ricardo eusebi teruki kamon and alexei safonov who either were students or postdoctoral researchers within it and are now among its principal investigators kamon produced the collaborations fourth phd thesis followed by toback (159th 1997) safonov (242nd 2001) and eusebi (345th 2005) all four played lead roles in tevatron run ii with toback leading the team that built the timing system for the cdf electromagnetic calorimeter beyond faculty contributions toback notes that dozens of texas a&m students have earned phds based on cdf-related work while many more have achieved masters degrees and/or did honors undergraduate thesis-related work with cdf in addition many within this collective cdf-inspired whole have gone on to faculty positions including at texas a&m and other prestigious research universities worldwide the collaborations prior crowning achievements include discovery of the top quark in 1995 insights into the production rate of charm quarks in 2017 and detection of the first substantive evidence of the higgs boson prior to the large hadron colliders 2012 full discovery that collectively resulted in peter higgs and francois englerts subsequent 2013 nobel prize in physics for theoretically predicting the elusive particles existence 50 years ago in addition to cdf toback serves as a co-principal investigator for the international super cryogenic dark matter search (supercdms) experiment and works in the areas of neutrino physics (dune r&d) quantum computing and big computing his past work includes the dzero experiment at fermilab and the cms experiment at the lhc cdf is in the business of reporting the facts as we know them toback said we take that role very seriously we take this small but clear difference from the standard model very seriously it might just might be the clue we need to crack open the case this has been an exciting adventure an honor and a privilege of the highest degree i am grateful to the texas a&m department of physics and astronomy the mitchell institute and my cdf community colleagues for the continued opportunity to serve the cdf collaboration see todays complete announcement from fermilab to learn more about cdf visit https://cdffnalgov for more information on tobacks broader research visit http://tobackgroupphysicstamuedu/ interested in additional background about the actual research check out this duke today feature on lead cdf collaboration researcher and duke physicist ashutosh v kotwal # # # # # # # # # # about research at texas a&m university: as one of the worlds leading research institutions texas a&m is at the forefront in making significant contributions to scholarship and discovery including in science and technology research conducted at texas a&m generated annual expenditures of more than $113 billion in fiscal year 2020 and ranked 14th in the national science foundations higher education research and development survey texas a&ms research creates new knowledge that provides basic fundamental and applied contributions resulting in many cases in economic benefits to the state nation and world to learn more visit research@texas a&m