Letter for Jacques

Letter for Jonas Arvind Tawker NSF fellowship Letter

I am writing to strongly support Jacques Moye's application for your program. Jacques has been a technician in my lab for almost a year and was also a student in an advanced physics laboratory course that I taught. He is a collaborative team member, skilled with both hands-on work and software, and effective at defining and solving open-ended problems.

I am an experimental particle physicist working on the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. At CMU, we are constructing an upgrade to the CMS detector, the High-Granularity Calorimeter, which involves assembling 8-inch silicon modules – essentially radiation-hard digital cameras. Each module consists of a silicon sensor attached to printed circuit board containing readout electronics and a base plate that provides cooling and structural stability. Module construction is performed using automated robotic systems to assemble components and make approximately 200 electrical connections per module. To facilitate this, we have established a small manufacturing center on campus capable of producing up to 25 modules per day, with production set to begin in early 2025.

Jacques has been critical in getting our lab ready to build modules. As one of a handful of full-time team members working on this effort, he has contributed to a wide range of projects, from building testing electronics to optimizing workflow for production using principles akin to industrial engineering. Jacques has been responsible for operating the main Gantry robot used for module assembly; he has built proto-type modules and has developed software to automate visual surveys during the assembly process. This has requried him to learn custom software and modify programs originally developed by domain-expert engineers.

In addition, Jacques has served as our interface with industry, managing the procurement of custom-machined parts for the lab. More recently, he has been programming a custom Graphical User Interface (GUI) tool to facilitate the storage of module data in a central database. Jacques has been indispensable to our group. He works closely with undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, and engineers, often supervising and coordinating their efforts.

I also had the opportunity to evaluate Jacques’s physics ability in the classroom. He was a strong student in the Modern Physics Laboratory course, earning a B+. During the course, he completed experiments on light scattering, Raman spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction, demonstrating both diligence and competence.

Jacques is quick to catch on and willing to work hard. He has a great work ethic, good common sense, and excellent intuition. It seems to me that Jacques Moye is the exact type of student that you’re looking for in your program. He is creative, productive, and fun to work with. I’ll be sad to see him go; we could use more like him at CMU!