The HEPCAT consortium offers graduate fellowships for two years to graduate students interested in the area of particle and nuclear physics detector development. The fellowships provide a stipend plus a tuition allowance for each year, and a travel allowance to allow the student to attend the annual HEPCAT summer school or travel to other institutions, as required. Fellowships begin in Fall, 2026.
The nomination packet shall be sent to the relevant topical group leaders (see below) by March 20, 2026.
Eligibility:
Graduate students enrolled at a HEPCAT member institution are eligible to be nominated for this fellowship, subject to the following:
- The nominee must be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident.
- The nominee must be enrolled in their first three year’s graduate Ph.D. program (incoming graduate students starting Fall 2026 are counted as 0th year and are not eligible for this round) in physics or a related discipline in instrumentation at one of the HEPCAT member institutions.
- The project will be the primary research activity of the HEPCAT Fellow during the fellowship period.
No institution will receive more than two fellowships in a given year.
Nomination Packet:
The potential candidate shall discuss with any HEPCAT mentors, listed on this website, and seek their nomination. The nomination packet will consist of a single pdf file with the following:
- Student CV, including graduate academic performance (an unofficial transcript is fine)
- Project proposal (1 page) and candidate statement (1 page)
- Supporting letter from project mentor (university faculty or lab scientist)
Topical Group Leaders:
- TG1: Radiation Hardness (John Conway, jsconway@ucdavis.edu)
- TG2: Noble Liquid Detectors (Jingke Xu, xu12@llnl.gov)
- TG3: UV/VUV Photosensors (Liang Yang, liyang@physics.ucsd.edu)
- TG4: Quantum Devices (Kent Irwin, irwin@stanford.edu)
- TG5: Optical Scintillators/Crystals (Bethany Goldblum, bethany@nuc.berkeley.edu)
- TG6: Silicon Detectors (Jason Nielsen, jnielsen@ucsc.edu)
- TG7: AI/ML for Detectors (Javier Duarte, jduarte@physics.ucsd.edu)
- TG8: Electronics/DAQ (Anyes Taffard, ataffard@uci.edu)
- Candidate’s academic preparation, research potential, and noncognitive competencies
- Scientific merit of the project
- Feasibility of the project, including adequacy of resources and facilities
- Mentorship record of the PI
HEPCAT Fellows will share with their topical group all theses, papers, and talks produced as part of the project, and at the end of the fellowship submit a report on the accomplishments and outcomes of the work.
