Congratulations to senior Jared Burleson, who graduates from SMU with a B.S. in Physics, a B.S. in Mathematics, and a Minor in Chinese. Jared and I have worked together since 2018 on two physics projects, both centered on the use of particle jets for fundamental physics. His first project was an extension of work done by a former student, Rebecca Moore, to use simulations of H -> gg to evaluate the potential for jet flavor tagging to identify H -> gg -> bbbb. His second project used the same kind of large-radius jets applied to the Higgs project to study charm jet reconstruction and identification at a future Electron-Ion Collider experiment.
His senior thesis summarizes his work. Jared graduates with many honors, including his selection as the Robert and Nancy Dedman Distinguished Senior Student, an honorific given to just one of the more than 700 graduates from Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences. He will pursue a Masters degree in public policy as a Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University before pursuing his Ph.D. in physics at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
