Research - Joel Walker

Walker joined the physics department at Sam Houston State University (SHSU) in 2005, and has served as the department chair since 2016. His current research interests include study of beyond the Standard Model signatures at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), investigation of collider kinematic variables and development of software tools for reinterpretation of LHC data, as well as probes of new physics in the neutrino sector at reactors. This work has been funded by the National Science Foundation since 2015, and Walker has been designated a KITP Scholar by the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Walker maintains a broad network of research collaborators, including several faculty at the nearby Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas A\&M University, and has published or worked directly with more than 20 individuals at fourteen different institutions during the last three years. His research overlaps with that of Professor James Dent, and both function as theory advisors to the MINER (Mitchell Institute Neutrino Experiment at Reactor) project. Walker's students at SHSU have gone on to graduate study at Baylor, Georgia Tech, the University of Houston (2), the University of Oklahoma (2), Southern Methodist University, the University of Texas at Dallas, Texas Tech(2), and Vanderbilt, and to careers in industry. Former student Kamal Lamichhane was awarded a prestigious LHC Physics Center Graduate Scholar appointment at FermiLab for 2018. Derek Johnson, Matt Breeding, Kebur Fantahun, and Ashen Fernando recently presented their research at the annual Phenomenology conference at the University of Pittsburgh, and the latter pair additionally published their work in Physical Review D as "Probing Squeezed Bino-Slepton Spectra with the Large Hadron Collider", in collaboration with faculty and post-doctoral assistants at Texas A&M, Oklahoma State, Hawaii, Utah, and Michigan. Walker's publication record is available at Inspire.