Information for Prospective Students

The purpose of this page is to give prospective students and idea of what travel demands are typically made on post-graduates working in the group. Obviously there is always the possibility to negotiate what you would do ...

Typically students travel out to the experiment for a few weeks near the time of collaboration meetings (of which there are about 5 a year). After about a year, it is usual for the student to go on Long Term Attachment (LTA) for about a year. What is LTA? This means, you go and live somewhere near to the experiment (e.g. Palo Alto/San Francisco or somewhere else close by) for a year and have the opportunity to really get involved with what is happening on the experiment at that time. The other benefit from this is that you'll be surrounded by people from the collaboration who are up-to-date with their work and be able to track down that elusive person for a chat over coffee about why you can't get that bit of software working ...

Like any other subject, doing a Ph.D. in experimental particle physics is hard work, but it is fun too (honest!). The benefits of working on BaBar include the opportunity to visit California as well as working in the UK. At the end of the day there is more to life than work and choosing to work somewhere you can live is important. If you haven't already done so, take a look at the physics page to learn more about what we at Liverpool and the BaBar collaboration get up to at work and what the Ph.D. students get up to. The rest of this page consists of links to give you a better idea of Liverpool and the San Francisco Bay Area. If you are interested in applying to join the group then look at the Physics Department's Postgraduate Studies web pages to see what to do next. Don't be afraid to e-mail any of us to ask any questions you might have.

Links in and around Liverpool:

Liverpool University

The Liverpool and Wirral guide.

Mersey World

Mersey Side.org.uk

Liverpool City Council

Links in and around the Bay Area:

BaBar is located at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), a part of Stanford University. Here is a map of the locality for a wide-area reference. To add a scale to this map; it takes 40-50 minutes to drive from San Francisco to Stanford. Tahoe is about 4 hours away and Yosemite is a bit further.

Stanford University; visitor information

SF Gate: Info on what's happening in the Bay Area.

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts

Lake Tahoe

Yosemite National Park

The Giants home page (Baseball; if your naive like me you wouldn't know this).

The Monterey Peninsula

Back to the Liverpool HEP Group Home-page