Rik Gran

Physicist. Alleged mastermind.

Link to Phys 1002 Intro to Physics II course Spring 2006 (internal UMD only)

Link to Phys 2021 Modern Physics course Spring 2006 (internal UMD only)

Link to Phys 5053 Data Analysis Methods course Fall 2006 (internal UMD only)

Link to potential student (undergraduate and Master's) projects.

Current Projects:

Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota Duluth
Working on the MINOS and MINERvA neutrino experiments. Also K2K and SuperK.

You may be interested in information about these experiments:
The MINOS neutrino oscillation experiment
The MINERvA neutrino interaction experiment
The K2K neutrino oscillation experiment
The SuperK neutrino observatory
And the WALTA experiment page plus my personal collection of Rik's WALTA information.

Education:

University of Minnesota. Ph.D. July 2002, Physics.
Carleton College, B.A. 1994, Double major Physics, Music.
Eden Prairie High School, 1990.

My Curriculum Vitae (pdf)

on forgetting:

Someone once told me: "Forgetting is not like not remembering."

Fifteen years ago, I thought this was an obvious, useful truth -- but I no longer know why.

Physics:

I am interested in neutrino oscillations and measuring the properties of neutrinos, their mass, and their interaction with other matter. A lot of my work is in neutrino-nucleus interactions observed in the near detectors of the MINOS and K2K long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments. I have been working to extract the axial vector mass parameter from the Q2 distribution of quasi-elastic neutrino interactions. I have also done extensive studies of nuclear effects in these interactions. Recently I have started work on the MINERvA neutrino interaction experiment which will run in the NuMI beam at Fermilab.

My thesis experiment (now longer ago than I can remember) was a coincidence experiment between cosmic ray air showers and the underground Soudan2 detector. The goal was to estimate the elemental composition of the cosmic rays in the knee region of the CR spectrum. For this I built or rebuilt parts of the air shower array, and handled all of the details of the hardware, analysis, and simulation.

Copies of my thesis are available upon request.

No new acronyms were created in the process of completing my thesis.

Short term plans:

Panic.

Marriage:

Happily married since July 19th 1997 to Mrs. Karen.

Kids:

You might be interested in photos of alex at my pages and sara's pages

Other projects:

My Virtual Bookshelf Project to see what I've been reading.
I play Ultimate Frisbee. The back of my card, whenever it is that somebody markets flatball cards, would include such memorable teams as Sonic, University of Minnesota, Swank, and Rut.
Central Intelligence Agency Cookbook, look for two new titles "Cooking secrets of the CIA" and "Julia Child and the French Resistance".
Another book series: "The Beauty of the Maths" and its first volume "The Beauty of the Calculus".
Genetically engineered sheep that enjoy knitting.
A combination fax, copier, scanner, laser printer, paper shredder. Just put the file into the trash on your desktop and out it comes in many tiny, tiny pieces.
GNUmerology, the numerology toolbox for Matlab(TM) and Octave.
Other un-specific travels and adventures.

I might know a little something or other about folding lawnchairs. Why do you ask?

Send me e-mail! As a spam avoidance technique, my e-mail address is rgran and it is at d umn edu (missing two dots).
I like mail, but I don't like so much of the yucky kind.