INDUSTRY

Today the University of Chicago’s Rob Gardner joins over 30 other physicists worldwide telling the story of their lives as 21st-century scientists in “Quantum Diaries.” Gardner will share with readers the ups and downs of work as a particle physicist and grid computing researcher as well as his thoughts and experiences outside the world of science. “The Diarists are giving people in many countries a great view of the diverse lives of scientists,” said Gardner. “I hope to add a new dimension to the blogs, by writing about my work in distributed computing infrastructures, my love of Chicago architecture and much more over the next year.” “Quantum Diaries” is a Web site that follows the lives of physicists from around the globe as they live the World Year of Physics, 2005. In their own words, in blogs, photographs and video clips, and in half a dozen languages, the Quantum Diarists give readers a real-time picture of the lives of physicists. Diarists don’t just write about challenges in the laboratory and in the classroom; they also write about their families, hobbies, interests and travels. Gardner, who holds a joint appointment in the Computation and Enrico Fermi institutes at the University of Chicago, is a collaborator on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider currently being built at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. When the LHC begins running in 2007, thousands of experimenters worldwide will need access to the mountains of particle physics data being constantly generated. Gardner and fellow physicists and computer scientists work to develop an international computing framework to give scientists around the globe a chance to make new discoveries. “Grid computing is an exciting field of study,” adds Gardner. “Groups in all fields of science are now developing grids, and we are beginning to explore their potential to revolutionize research and life, much as the Internet did a few years ago. 2005 should be an interesting year, and I look forward to writing about it in the Diaries.” The Quantum Diaries Web site was developed and is jointly maintained by the InterAction collaboration, whose members represent the world's particle physics laboratories in Europe, North America and Asia, with funding provided by the science funding agencies of many nations.