Spartan software
Every time Fermilab scientist Tom Schwarz starts up SpartyJet, he inwardly grimaces.
The computer program works well. It does a fine job of finding and recording jets—sprays of subatomic particles that emerge from collisions involving protons.
But as a graduate of the University of Michigan, Schwarz finds one thing irritating: The software was named for Sparty, a Spartan warrior and the mascot of rival Michigan State University. The two universities battle for student enrollment, academic prowess, and success on the football field.
The software was created last fall by a group led by Michigan State professor Joey Huston, who collaborates with Schwarz on Fermilab’s CDF experiment. “Joey chose that name just to goad me,” Schwarz says jokingly.
Part of the credit for developing SpartyJet goes to yet another Spartan—Michigan State undergraduate student Kurtis Geerlings.
“It is unusual for an undergraduate to be able to create cutting-edge software like this, and it bodes well for him,” says Huston, who invited Geerlings to join the team, along with postdoctoral researcher Pierre-Antoine Delsart from the French laboratory LAPP.
Last year, he says, Geerlings presented his work at a CDF meeting, and “everyone was sending me e-mail asking if Kurtis had committed to a graduate school yet, and could they interest him in theirs.”
Geerlings says that as an undergraduate not burdened with PhD research, he actually had more freedom to pursue his interest in SpartyJet.
As for the name, he says it’s a good thing: “I got sick of referring to it as ‘the anonymous program’ or ‘the program which must not be named.’”
Haley Bridger
Click here to download the pdf version of this article.
