Dr. Donald Summers

Degrees Earned

• Ph.D., 1984, University of California, Santa Barbara

Experience

• Visiting Researcher, Fermilab, 1978-84
• Project Associate, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1984-87
• CERN Associate, 1984-87
• Research Associate, Fermilab, 1987-89
• Assistant Professor, University of Mississippi, 1989-95
• Associate Professor, University of Mississippi, 1995-2002
• Professor, University of Mississippi, 2002-present

Memberships

• American Physical Society

Research Interests

I am interested in the investigation of the fundamental nature of
matter and have collaborated on high energy physics experiments
at Fermilab in Illinois and at CERN in Switzerland. At CERN, I
worked on the UA1 experiment that discovered the W+, W-, and Z0
intermediate vector bosons. The Nobel Prize was awarded for the
discovery of these very heavy particles, which mediate all weak
interactions. Work on Mississippi’s experiment at Fermilab has
involved the application of very high speed data acquisition
systems and massively parallel computing systems to studying
charm quarks. My experiment, E791, at Fermilab has accumulated
the world’s largest sample of these heavy quarks. Future
interests include analyzing the charm quark as well as
investigating broken symmetries in nature through the study of
large numbers of beauty quarks at the SLAC b-factory in
California.