Optimising the ATLAS Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger and Top-Antitop Charge Asymmetry

The last year I have been working on a scenario where the luminosity at the ATLAS experiment becomes high enough that we need to apply harsher cuts on the trigger selection. I used a sample of background QCD jets (events we don't want to keep) and a sample of electrons from Z bosons (that we do want to keep) to reduce the rate of data-taking but keeping the efficiency as high as possible. A set of cuts were thus deduced and have been placed in the trigger menu which may be used for this year's running of the LHC.
I am further involved with an analysis on top-antitop quark charge asymmetry. Here we are looking at the decay products of the two particles and observing their respective boosts (rapidities) in the detector to see if their values differ from those predicted by the Standard Model of Particle Physics. Some models beyond the Standard Model predict different behaviour. Currently, I am comparing methods which reconstruct the top quarks from their decay products, seeing how well they perform, using Monte-Carlo data to test them.
My main thesis topic is yet to be decided but will be a larger analysis on top quarks, perhaps even a continuation of charge asymmetry with all of the LHC run 2 data.