Added feature story for IRIS-HEP Fellows Program (#2758)

Author: rct225

_posts/2025-12-09-fellows-program-feature.md

@@ -0,0 +1,94 @@
+---
+layout: irispost
+title: "Next-Generation Researchers for Next-Generation Physics: The Fellows Program at IRIS-HEP, an Institute Focused on Software"
+author: Adam Hadhazy
+image: /assets/images/posts/2025-12-09-fellows-program-feature-image6.png
+image-whole: true
+image-caption: >
+    An event display of trajectories in the OpenDataDetector, the simulated detector Max Zhao was working with during his tracking project, to show the density of trajectories in high-energy experiments. Credit: CERN
+summary: >
+    The IRIS-HEP Fellows Program develops the next generation of computational physicists through mentored research projects that build advanced software for the HL-LHC, providing students with hands-on training, professional development, and entry into a global research community.
+figure-class: center
+---
+
+Humanity will break new ground in the timeless quest to understand nature’s fundamental building blocks with the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) in several years. An enhanced version of the biggest particle accelerator ever built, the HL-LHC will generate tremendous amounts of data, posing formidable processing and analysis challenges that will require powerful new computing approaches.
+
+To meet this challenge, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and partners founded the [Institute for Research and Innovation in Software for High Energy Physics](https://iris-hep.org/) (IRIS-HEP) in September 2018\. A key element of IRIS-HEP is the cultivation of the next generation of computational physicists, and toward this end, IRIS-HEP established its [Fellows program](https://iris-hep.org/fellows.html).
+
+For seven years now, the flagship program has promoted the development of advanced research software skills by connecting students with mentors in the broader high-energy physics and computational and data science communities.
+
+“At IRIS-HEP, we say that ‘people are the key to successful software’,” says [Gordon Watts](https://phys.washington.edu/people/gordon-watts), a professor of physics at the University of Washington who serves as IRIS-HEP co-Principal Investigator and Deputy Executive Director. “Through the Fellows program, we’re helping promising students at universities grow their skills and journey further into the world of high-energy physics, where they can make a real difference in advancing human knowledge.”
+
+
+{% include figure.html
+    file="/assets/images/posts/2025-12-09-fellows-program-feature-image2.png"
+    alt="IRIS-HEP Fellows Program infographic highlighting key metrics: 167 Fellows from 2019–2025, 173 Mentors supporting software R&D projects, and a global network of 85 partner institutions across three continents—43 in the US & Canada and 42 in Europe & India."
+    caption=""
+    img-style="width: 750px"
+    figure-style="width: min-content"
+    class="center"
+%}
+
+## Comprehensive Training
+
+With the summer 2025 session recently concluded, around 170 people have now gone through the Fellows program since its inception. The program has continued to emphasize software as a collaborative activity, maximizing both individual potential and individual’s potential impact on the field.
+
+IRIS-HEP Fellows typically spend 10-12 weeks working remotely with a mentor in their local home institution alongside international colleagues via online meetings and correspondence. The work involves programming and working with code to use or develop research software that helps prepare for the LH-LHC and other experiments’ vast amounts of data.
+
+Initially, the program mentors provide candidate students with a problem statement, and the students propose a program of work. The Fellows give talks at both the start and end of their fellowship, honing their communication skills, and culminating in a writeup of their project.
+
+“A key component is workforce development,” says Watts. “We expose undergraduates to a modern research environment and we hope they learn not only how to address research problems, but also how to work with other researchers using modern software practices. We try to bake in best practices from the start, and all of this attempts to systematically guide the students in their training.”
+
+## Creating a Coterie of Coders
+<div class="d-flex justify-content-center">
+
+{% include figure.html
+    file="/assets/images/posts/2025-12-09-fellows-program-feature-image1.jpg"
+    alt="A simple diagram to show what track reconstruction means in general"
+    caption="A simple diagram to show what track reconstruction means in general. Credit: ATLAS Experiment"
+    img-style="width: 600px"
+    figure-style="width: min-content"
+    class="mx-3"
+%}
+
+{% include figure.html
+    file="/assets/images/posts/2025-12-09-fellows-program-feature-image5.png"
+    alt="Photograph of former IRIS-HEP Fellow and current Princeton University graduate student Max Zhao"
+    caption="Max Zhao, former IRIS-HEP Fellow and current Princeton University graduate student, Credit: Max Zhao"
+    img-style="width: 300px"
+    figure-style="width: min-content"
+    class="mx-3"
+%}
+</div>
+
+For former fellows, the program has often accelerated their academic and scientific careers. Max Zhao, now a graduate student at Princeton University advised by [Isobel Ojalvo](https://phy.princeton.edu/people/isobel-ojalvo), looks back on his fellowship fondly. He worked as a fellow in summer 2022 while an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley. Zhao’s [project](https://iris-hep.org/fellows/max-zhao0.html) involved developing algorithms for track reconstruction, the problem of modeling the trajectories of charged particles zipping through experimental spaces and hitting detectors.
+
+Building on his experience, Zhao is part of the international collaboration for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), one of the two large general-purpose experiments at the LHC and the imminent HL-LHC upgrade. His current work centers on novel data analysis techniques. He has also continued to pursue research in statistical inference software, part of the mission of the IRIS-HEP Analysis Systems group.
+
+“The Fellows program was very valuable in connecting me to the IRIS-HEP network, which I’m still involved in today,” says Zhao.
+
+The program also fostered his skills in the science of high-energy physics, a field he has remained in, showing him a way to apply his aptitude and interest in computation. “The fellowship was one of the more impactful parts of my undergraduate research experience,” says Zhao. “It was my first time in high-energy, so it was like my jumping off point for the rest of my undergraduate experience and then into graduate school.”
+
+
+
+A recent Fellow, Rūta Lomsargytė, who participated in the program over July and August this past summer, has likewise found the experience to be galvanizing. Based at Vilnius University, a close collaborator with IRIS-HEP as part of the [IMPRESS-U](https://www.nsf.gov/news/nsf-announces-international-multilateral) international collaboration, Lomsargytė had the special opportunity to spend her Fellow time directly at CERN, the host organization for the LHC in Switzerland. There, she got to meet face-to-face with Watts, one of her mentors, as well as mentors from Princeton University: [Peter Elmer](https://elmer.scholar.princeton.edu/), IRIS-HEP Principal Investigator and Executive Director, and [David Lange](https://phy.princeton.edu/people/david-lange), Innovative Algorithms Area co-Lead. “It was a whole other experience and really inspiring,” Lomsargytė says.
+
+{% include figure.html
+    file="/assets/images/posts/2025-12-09-fellows-program-feature-image4.png"
+    alt="Photograph of recent IRIS-HEP / IMPRESS-U Fellow Rūta Lomsargytė"
+    caption="Rūta Lomsargytė at the World Wide Web memorial plate in CERN. Credit:Eglė Lenkaitytė."
+    img-style="width: 500px"
+    figure-style="width: min-content"
+%}
+
+Her [project](https://iris-hep.org/fellows/rrutaa.html) focused on bringing to bear the benefits of a contemporary large language model as a co-pilot tool for researchers analyzing CMS data. The look-up tool is intended to provide helpful answers to technical questions, assist in writing or understanding code, and retrieve relevant technical information from internal CMS sources—overall offering significant efficiency gains and reducing “time to insight,” in the parlance.
+
+“With this new LLM trend going on right now, we explored the idea of creating a tool to collect all the information that you might need,” says Lomsargytė. “We were able to draw some useful conclusions that could be used for future development.”
+
+In her third year, Lomsargytė has discovered her passion for making software tools and she looks forward to exploring more areas at the nexus of computation and high-energy physics. For mentors in the program, seeing this enthusiasm and attainment of skills by Fellows is itself a source of continuing inspiration.
+
+“From my point of view, as a mentor, it is exciting because I end up working with some very smart and energetic undergraduates,” says Watts. “It is part of what makes work in this field worthwhile."
+
+Overall, the IRIS-HEP Fellows program is readying a next generation of researchers who will take high-energy physics to new levels.
+
+“Many sciences, and experimental particle physics in particular, are collaborative endeavors, and with many people working to produce the physics and develop the software tools, it can be daunting,” says Watts. “The IRIS-HEP Fellows program helps introduce undergraduate students to this endeavor and provides them with valuable skills that they carry forward to industry or research.”