Graduate Student Dylan Blend has been awarded $16,400 from the Universities Research Association's (URA) Visiting Scholars Program (VSP) to work on the CMS Outer Tracker Phase II Upgrade at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, IL.

The High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) project will be a major upgrade of the LHC that will make it possible to gather more information and in greater detail by increasing the number of collisions by a factor of between five and seven. To achieve this feat, modifications to the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) will need to be implemented. Upgraded components to the CMS Outer Tracker, 2S and PS modules, will be constructed at the Silicon Detector Facility (SiDet) located onsite at Fermilab. Blend will begin work at Fermilab in the Spring 2024 semester.

VSP was established in 2007 to support faculty and students from URA institutions to work at Fermilab for up to one year.