texas a&m university physicist dr david toback has been elected to his third consecutive two-year term as co-spokesperson for the cdf collaboration at the us department of energys fermi national accelerator laboratory (fermilab) effective june 1 2018 dr david toback toback a high-energy physics expert and veteran researcher in several related international collaborations joined the texas a&m department of physics and astronomy in 2000 and is a member of the george p and cynthia woods mitchell institute for fundamental physics and astronomy since june 1 2014 he has served as co-spokesperson and overall physics coordinator for the collider detector at fermilab collaboration which he began working with in 1991 as a graduate student at the university of chicago in january he also was elected to the cryogenic dark matter search (cdms) experiment executive committee in the past toback has served as co-convener of cdfs top + beyond the standard model group and also guided the supersymmetry group a leading candidate to explain dark matter and one focus of tobacks study in 2015 he was elected as a fellow of the american physical society on the basis of his cdf experiment leadership and pioneering work on related searches for new particles we congratulate david for this excellent result and thank him for accepting to serve said former cdf co-spokesperson luciano ristori on behalf of the election committee we also want to thank all the people who took the time to vote and note that this excellent turnout shows that cdf is still a large community of people who still care about the completion of our physics program although the cdf experiment representing 63 institutions in 15 countries is no longer taking data toback says its impact lives on in its analysis including the collaborations landmark 700th paper published last year in physical review d and shedding new light on the production rate of charm quarks the collaboration maintains a 400-person active author list i am grateful to the texas a&m department of physics and astronomy and the mitchell institute for the continued opportunity to serve the cdf collaboration toback said its time to finish the job we started and publish our last papers my hope is that this is the last election for cdf we have joked that since we soon wont need leadership anymore but still will need people who can speak for the collaboration results they may just make me benevolent dictator for life fermilabs tevatron and cerns large hadron collider (lhc) are the past and current record holders respectively for the most powerful particle collider on earth after 26 years of colliding particles the tevatron shut down on september 29 2011 with the completion of the lhc however because it observed collisons between protons and antiprotons via its two detectors the three-story 6 000-ton cdf along with its companion dzero toback notes that the tevatron produced fundamental results that can neither be achieved nor replicated at the lhc toback offering career guidance and inspiration to a past group of pearson mechanics scholars a decorated educator and science communicator he is a two-time thaman professor in undergraduate teaching excellence (2008-11 2012-15) and author of the textbook big bang black holes no math the basis for his popular undergraduate course offered by the department of physics and astronomy texas a&ms history is more extensive than tobacks with the cdf experiment 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 (there are 638 to date) 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 in addition to faculty contributions toback notes that 11 texas a&m students have earned phds based on cdf-related work: ziqing hong (toback 2015); jonathan asaadi (toback 2012) adam aurisano (toback 2012); andrey elagin (safonov 2011); eunsin lee (toback 2010); vadim khotilovich (safonov and kamon 2008); peter wagner (toback 2007); vyachelav krutelyov (kamon 2005); james done (kamon 1999); louis keeble (mcintyre 1992) and timothy hessing (webb 1990) wagners was recognized as the 2007 universities research associations graduate thesis of the year many more texas a&m students 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 crowning achievements include discovery of the top quark in 1995 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 to learn more about cdf visit http://www-cdffnalgov/collaboration/ for more information on texas a&m collider physics go to http://colliderphysicstamuedu/ for more on tobacks broader research visit http://tobackgroupphysicstamuedu/ # # # # # # # # # # 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 that of science and technology research conducted at texas a&m represented annual expenditures of more than $9054 million in fiscal year 2017 texas a&m ranked in the top 20 of the national science foundations higher education research and development survey (2016) based on expenditures of more than $8927 million in fiscal year 2016 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 http://researchtamuedu/ -atm- contact: shana k hutchins (979) 862-1237 or shutchins@sciencetamuedu or david toback (979) 845-7717 or toback@tamuedu