Professor Virdee was elected Fellow of Royal Society in 2012. We highlight some of his incredible research.
Professor Tejinder Singh Virdee, FRS
Professor of Physics
Imperial College London
Professor Tejinder (Jim) Virdee FRS and Dr Lyn Evans FRS are among seven senior scientists who have recently been awarded the Fundamental Physics Prize. The prize is awarded to them for their instrumental role in the design, construction and operation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), ATLAS and CMS experiments, and leadership which led to the discovery of the new Higgs-like particle.
Professor Virdee was one of the five physicists who first proposed the CMS experiment. He was the spokesperson for the collaboration from 2006-2010.
Tejinder Virdee is primarily distinguished for the design, construction and exploitation of the huge CMS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. He originated the concept of CMS with four colleagues around 1990 and there are now over 3000 participants from 38 countries. The motivation is the discovery of the mass generating mechanism for matter, currently considered to be the Higgs mechanism, and the nature of what lies beyond the Standard Model. Virdee devised a new technology for the large CMS electromagnetic calorimeter and one of his earlier innovations was employed for the Hadron calorimeter. He was leader of the collaboration during final commissioning and first data taking between 2006 and 2010 and now concentrates on the search for the Higgs boson. The superb performance of CMS since high energy collisions began at the LHC is testimony to his foresight, expertise and appreciation of the complex interplay of techniques which are needed for such success.
Professor Virdee was elected Fellow of Royal Society in 2012 and more information about his work can be found on his Imperial College London profile.
