Kerem Cankocak

 

Istanbul Technical University

Physics Department

ITU CMS group team leader

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

kerem.cankocak@cern.ch

ITU CMS group
CMS Hadron Calorimeter
U(1)' project
Regional ICFA Instrumentation School
pictures (family, CERN, Ceneva,..)
personal info

Publications

 

Important dates

 

1989 Graduation from Bogazi\8Di University, Istanbul

1994-1998 DELPHI membership as research assistant at Stockholm University

1999 – 2007 Faculty at the University of Mugla, Turkey

2001 CMS member, as a researcher supported by TUBITAK  grant

2007 – 2009 Research Associate in HEP Group, Iowa University, USA

2009 – present Faculty at the Istanbul Technical University, Turkey

2010 Member of the CMS Collaboration Board 

2010 Member of the CMS-HCAL Institutional Board

2011 – present team leader and project leader of ITU-CMS group, granted by TAEK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Research activities

 

DELPHI Experiment at LEP (CERN): 1994-1999

 

I did my licentiate thesis at CERN on the \D2measurement of the inclusive branching ratios of Tau decays in the Delphi detector at LEP\D3, under the supervision of Sven-Olof Holmgren. I worked on the discrepancy between the topological and the exclusive branching ratios of the one, three and five charged particles decay mode of  Tau lepton, the so-called \D3missing modes problem\D3, to derive more consistent picture of the tau decay properties through the decay of Z0 bosons.

On the technical side I contributed to the development, installation, commissioning, calibration and alignment of a set of lead-scintillator counters which cover the region with  q between 360 and 410 to improve the hermeticity of the DELPHI detector. In this project under the leadership of Alberto Benvenuti, I was involved in all the phases of the development of the new detector.  My other involvement was the High Density Projection electromagnetic calorimeter. I joined test beam, calibration and quality monitoring for144 readout chambers. I also intensively participated to data taking shift of DELPHI detector at various levels.

Finally, at the last era of LEP, I have contributed to SUSY searches at DELPHI experiment, analyzing the data and comparing with MC models in order to find an excess from Z0 decays, mainly on MSSM chargino-neutralino channels.

 

CMS Experiment at LHC:  2001- present

 

Being a faculty member at the Mugla University, I have joined to CMS experiment under the METU project supported by TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey). My main involvement was Hadronic Calorimeter in CMS. I have worked at several stages of calorimeter design, installation, commissioning and calibration, including sourcing the modules and test beams. We did intensive radiation damage studies on the calorimeter fibres, scintillator plates, electronics and silicon based photomultipliers.

 

I have participated to the installation and commissioning of 36 Forward Hadronic Calorimeters (HF) modules in building 186 at CERN and performed radiation damage analysis of the quartz fibers which are installed inside the HF absorbers. Thoe raddam tests were done with PS beam of CERN during 2002-2004. Then the calibration with sourcing were done for all HF wedges. During 2004-2006 I participated similar studies for other HCAL wedges. The relative (tower-to-tower) calibration of HCAL was performed using radioactive sources as part of commissioning the HCAL Barrel wedges in the CMS surface hall (SX5) in 2005 and 2006.

A separate detector project that I was involved as one of the leading physicist was the online radiation monitoring of HF (RADDAM online). This is completely new radiation monitoring detector, based on the measurement of the aging at one end of the fibers which are inside HF absorbers. Being at both ends of CMS, HF detectors are like end caps and the fibres insides the HF wedges have two ends.  The ends which are closer to the interaction point (IP) are aged more than the other end. We have developed an online method to measure the aging at the end closer to IP. Starting this project in 2002, after designing, developing, installing, testing and calibrating the RADDAM detectors they were ready to use at the first data taking of LHC in 2008. Presently they are performing well and measuring the radiation damage on HF fibres during LHC collisions. Using this data HF channels are re-calibrated during data taking period.

In 2007 all the CMS sub-detectors were lowered down installed in the cavern. During 2006-2008 my main task was to commission hadron calorimeter. For this work I have received CMS award. The commissioning work in the underground cavern included collecting data using subdetector DAQ systems (local runs) and central CMS DAQ and trigger systems (global runs). The global runs deploy larger and larger parts of detectors, as they are built and commissioned detector and then are included into simulations and data analysis. The main steps of the commissioning in the underground cavern were tests using local runs (pedestals, LED); synchronization of various sub-detector systems (Muon, Calorimetry, Tracker); global commissioning runs (using cosmic ray triggers); preparing for 24 hours/7 days operation. Then, I worked on full integration of HCAL with CMS system, monitoring of HCAL hardware (pedestals, LED), participation in CMS global runs. HF was the first detector in CMS which took data with cosmic muons.  For this work I have received CMS award. When the LHC data taking started, I worked as HCAL online operator and done various data taking shifts (DAQ, Data Quality Monitoring Trigger, run coordination).

In 2010, after being a faculty member in the Technical University Physics department, I initiated the process in order that our institute become a member of CMS. After my presentation at the CMS Collaboration Board, our institute have been accepted. Since then, I \D4m the team leader of the Istanbul Technical University group and a member of CMS Collaboration Board. I\D5m also a member of the CMS-HCAL Institutional Board.

 In 2011, my proposal to the Turkish  Atomic Energy Authority was granted.                   First project (Radiation Monitoring & Hadronic Calorimeter Detector Upgrade Studies at the CERN CMS Experiment) was between 2001-2014 and it is accomplished successfully. My second grant which is Detector upgrade for phase II and new particles search beyond the Standart Model in the  LHC- CMS experiment is still an ongoing project. Since 2011, my graduate students have been working for CMS experiment and mainly on HCAL. Some of them are also looking to LHC data, mainly in the SUSY search group.