Before, behind and beyond the discovery of the Higgs Boson

Biography not yet available

Chris Llewellyn Smith is Director of Energy Research, Oxford University, and President of the Council of SESAME (Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East).  He has chaired the Council of ITER, the global fusion energy project, directed the UK's fusion programme, and served as Provost and President of University College London, Director General of CERN (1994-1998, when the Large Hadron Collider was approved and construction started), and Chairman of Oxford Physics.  His theoretical contributions to the ‘standard model’ of particle physics were recognised by his election to the Royal Society in 1984.  He has written and spoken widely on science funding, international scientific collaboration and energy issues, and served on many advisory bodies nationally and internationally, including the UK Prime Minister’s Advisory Council on Science and Technology (1989-92).  His scientific contributions and leadership have been recognised by awards and honours in seven countries on three continents.

Tom Kibble was educated in Edinburgh and joined the Theoretical Physics Group at Imperial College London led by Professor Abdus Salam in 1959. He became Professor of Theoretical Physics in 1970, and was Head of the Physics Department from 1983 to 1991. He retired in 1998 and is now Emeritus Professor and Distinguished Research Fellow. Tom’s research interests have been in quantum field theory, high-energy particle physics and cosmology, especially spontaneous symmetry breaking and topological defect formation. He is best known for work on the mechanism for giving mass to gauge bosons, and was one of the first proponents of the idea of cosmic strings which may have been formed in the very early Universe. Kibble was elected FRS in 1980 and knighted in 2014. Among numerous other awards, he has received Royal Medals from the Royal Societies of both London and Edinburgh.

Biography

Prof. G. Dissertori has studied Physics at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. In 1997 he obtained his PhD in Physics, for a thesis on theoretical studies and experimental data analyses related to the ALEPH experiment at CERN’s electron-positron collider LEP. From 1997 to 2001 he worked at CERN, first as Research Fellow and then as Research Staff scientist. During that time he continued his work on the ALEPH experiment and started his involvement with the CMS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. In September 2001 he became Assistant Professor at ETH Zurich. Since 2007 he is Full Professor and currently he is the Head of the Institute for Particle Physics. The main focus of his research group is on the operation and physics exploitation of the CMS experiment. Besides his research activities, G. Dissertori pays particular attention to his teaching at ETH, which has already been awarded several times.

Biography

Austin Ball is a staff physicist at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research.  At the University of Manchester (UK), he received a Ph.D.  in High Energy Physics in 1980 and thereafter studied electron-positron collisions with the JADE experiment at the PETRA collider in DESY, Hamburg, Germany, focusing on the installation, optimisation and exploitation for physics of the muon detection system.  Moving to University of Maryland (US), he eventually led the technical team which delivered a large part of the Hadron Calorimeter (HCAL) for the OPAL experiment at the LEP electron positron-collider at CERN. After periods as HCAL technical coordinator, B-physics analysis convenor and Run Coordinator for that experiment, interspersed (until its cancellation) with R & D, at various labs in the US, for the SDC experiment at the Superconducting Supercollider (US), he joined CERN in 1998 as Deputy Technical Coordinator of the CMS experiment, just as construction started.  As Technical Coordinator since 2006, he has been responsible for the surface commissioning, underground installation, technical operation and first major upgrade of the CMS experiment. 

Biography

Fabiola Gianotti, PhD, is a research physicist at CERN and Honourary
Professor at the University of Edinburgh.
From March 2009 to February 2013 she has been the co-ordinator ("Spokesperson") of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider.  On 4 July 2012 she presented the ATLAS results in a seminar at CERN, where the discovery of the Higgs boson was announced by the ATLAS and CMS experiments.

She is a member of the Italian Academy of Sciences. She has been awarded the honour of  "Grande Ufficiale" by the Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, the Enrico Fermi prize of the Italian Physical Society and the Fundamental Physics Prize of the
Milner Foundation. She received Honourary Doctoral Degrees from the University of Uppsala and from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board to the UN Secretary-General
Mr Ban Ki-moon.

Tejinder (Jim) Virdee is Professor of Physics at Imperial College, London. After the UA1 experiment (1990), where W and Z bosons were discovered, Virdee concentrated on the physics and experimentation at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. He is one of the founding members of the Compact Muon Solenoid Collaboration (CMS) at the LHC. Virdee has played a major role in all phases of the experiment, from conception and design, through construction to the extraction of science that have already lasted around 25 years. He pioneered some of the techniques used in its calorimeters crucial for the discovery of a Higgs boson announced by the CMS experiment in July 2012, along with the sister experiment ATLAS. Virdee was the Spokesperson of the CMS Collaboration for three years, from 2007, that included the start of collision data taking, and was its Deputy Spokesperson from 1993 to 2006. Virdee’s current work involves studies of the newly found Higgs boson, search for physics beyond the standard model of particle physics and the definition of the upgraded CMS detector for very high luminosity LHC running. Amongst the prizes he has won is the 2013 European Physical Society-HEPP prize co-awarded for his “pioneering and outstanding leadership role in the making of the CMS experiment”. Virdee was made Knight Bachelor in 2014.

Biography

Paul Collier studied physics at Leeds University, UK and obtained his Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Applied Physics in 1985. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and a Chartered Engineer. Having worked as a lecturer on Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering at Sheffield University for two years, he was hired at CERN in 1987 to work on the radio-frequency control system of the LEP (Large Electron Positron collider). His zeal for the design, operation and performance of the LEP accelerator piloted him to the role of Machine Coordinator for the SPS-Accelerator complex. In 1997 he was entrusted the Project of the SPS upgrade of the LHC injector, to oversee the design and installation of new and upgraded material required for the LHC beams. This Project successfully completed, P. Collier was assigned the responsibility of running the Accelerator and Beams Operations Group, thus supervising the operation with beams for the whole CERN complex.  Two years later, in 2009, was he nominated Head of the Beams Department, responsible for the beam generation, acceleration, diagnostics and controls of the CERN accelerator complex. With his internationally recognized expertise as an applied physicist he has participated in many international advisory panels and reviews and within the Tripartite Forum on Employment Conditions with CERN Member States.

Biography

Christophe Grojean started his research work in theoretical high energy physics at CEA Saclay and got his PhD from Orsay University in 1999. He then spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley before being hired on a permanent research position at Saclay. In 2004, he was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In 2006, he joined the theory unit at CERN first as a fellow and then as junior staff scientist. In the fall of 2012, he joined the Institut de Física d’Altes Energies at UAB as an ICREA Research Professor. He has worked on various topics in particle physics beyond the Standard Model and a few years ago he specialized himself in the physics and the dynamics of the Higgs boson and its possible various incarnations.

Biography

Dave Charlton has been the Spokesperson of the ATLAS Collaboration since March 2013. Before that he was Deputy Spokesperson for four years, and previously Physics Coordinator in 2008-9. He has been Professor of Particle Physics at the University of Birmingham since 2005. During ATLAS construction, he worked on two different pieces of the detector: hybrid readout circuits for the silicon strip sensors of the Semiconductor Tracker (SCT) detector; and on the first-level calorimeter trigger system, responsible for selecting one-in-ten-thousand interesting events within a few microseconds of the proton-proton interactions taking place in ATLAS. From 1989 to 2001, he worked on the OPAL experiment at the LEP electron-positron collider at CERN, on data analysis, components of the trigger and data acquisition systems, muon identification, and more. He was OPAL's Physics Coordinator in 1996-7. He was a Royal Society University Research Fellow from 1994 to 2002. Before 1989 he was a PhD student on the UA1 experiment, searching for – and failing to find – the top quark, which was too massive to be detected there.

Biography

Ben Allanach is a Professor of theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge and Principal Investigator for theoretical high energy physics there. He primarily works on interpreting the Large Hadron Collider data, asking what they mean for various theories such as supersymmetry, extra dimensions and models of dark matter. His computer program SOFTSUSY, which calculates the masses and other properties of supersymmetric particles, is used by both general purpose LHC experiments to interpret their searches. He was one of the founding architects of the "SUSY Les Houches accord", which allows the integrated use of such information to be universally communicated between the many different computer programs that calculate various different physical observables. He has been working with experiments to suggest the best ways of presenting complex experimental information. He was scientific secretary for the CERN Council Strategy Group in 2005-2006, and was awarded a Gambrinus Fellowship at Dortmund University of Technology in 2008.

Biography

PhD from MIT on UA1 (jet physics). Scientific associate at CERN (UA1, heavy flavors), then Wilson fellow at Fermilab (CDF). Assistant professor at MIT, 1990, always on CDF, working on top and B physics -- then associate then full prof (MIT). Joined CMS experiment at LHC in 94, working on trigger/DAQ.  At CERN since 1997, prof of physics at Univ of Athens since 2002. In CMS: till 2004 Data Acquisition System and High Level Trigger; 2005-06 head of Computing. Software and Physics, 2007-2009 physics coordinator, 2012-2013 chair of CMS Publications Committee.  From Jan 2014 deputy spokesperson.  Working on SUSY searches.

Jonathan Ellis has made numerous contributions to the theory of elementary particles and especially unified gauge theories. Particularly notable were the first proposal of three jet structure (subsequently seen experimentally) as a gluon signal, and the first precise application of the renormalization group to grand unified theories, with the first precise estimate of sin2 θ W. Works on the theory of CP violation, on the phenomenology of the Higgs boson, and on the implications of grand unified theories for the generation of baryon number in the early Universe, have also attracted much attention. His gift for communication (his summer school lectures and reviews are models of their kind), and his special concern with the experimental implications of topical theories, make him a key figure in the discussion of new high-energy physics projects.

Biography

Prof Terry Wyatt FRS is an experimental particle physicist who is distinguished for a number of original and
important contributions to the experimental verification of the Standard Model (SM). By combining unusual
expertise in detector performance with exceptional insight into the topological features of different
interaction dynamics, Wyatt has developed and implemented powerful new discriminants of signatures for
the production of heavy quarks (b and t) and electroweak bosons (W and Z). His application of these
techniques in electron-positron interactions (LEP at CERN) and in proton-antiproton interactions (the
SPS collider at CERN and the Tevatron at Fermilab) has resulted in measurements of unprecedented
precision. He led the D0 experiment at Fermilab as its spokesperson from 2004-2007. He now works on
the ATLAS experiment at the CERN LHC and serves as a member of the CERN Scientific Policy Committee. 

Mikhail Shaposhnikov studied at Moscow State University and got his PhD from the Institute for Nuclear Research of Russian Academy of Sciences (INR RAS) in 1982. From 1982 until 1991 he was a research scientist at INR RAS. During 1991 and 1998 he was a staff member at CERN, Geneva. In 1998 he moved to the University of Lausanne. Since 2003 he has been a Professor at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, leading the Laboratory for Particle Physics and Cosmology. He worked on the problem of baryon asymmetry of the universe, on phase transitions in gauge theories at high temperatures and their cosmological applications, on alternatives to compactification, on dark matter and cosmological constant, and on cosmological inflation.

Biography

Dr Buchmueller is an academic faculty member at Imperial College. He is an expert on searches for new physics at colliders with a special emphasis on the subjects of Supersymmetry, Dark matter, and Higgs. He joined the CMS collaboration in 2003 and has spearheaded several activities and data analyses in CMS. Since 2012 he is co-chairing the Trigger Performance and Strategy Working Group in CMS. Driven by the needs of an evolving physics program and increasing LHC luminosity this group is charged to define the trigger characteristics, specifications, and upgrades for CMS operation at the high luminosity LHC.

Biography

Pippa Wells is a physicist at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics. She first visited the lab in 1986 as a summer student for two months. After completing her PhD at the University of Cambridge, she took up a CERN fellowship and then a staff position, working on the OPAL experiment at the LEP collider. This included taking into account the effects of local electric trains on the LEP magnets, and earth tides on the accelerator tunnel, to make precise measurements of the Z and W boson masses. She is now a member of the ATLAS collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider. After a number of years as project leader of the innermost part of the detector, which measures the tracks of charged particles as they emerge from the interaction point, she now coordinates studies of the physics potential of the high-luminosity LHC and the associated detector upgrades."