Royal Holloway Particle Physics Researchers to Benefit from £72 Million STFC Funding

Physics researchers at Royal Holloway are among those to benefit from a major investment of £72 million over the next four years for experiments that will advance our understanding of the Universe.

Announced on Thursday (10 December) by the UK’s Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC), the funding will support university research teams who focus on answering some of the fundamental questions in physics today, from fundamental studies of the properties of matter to advanced applications of Physics to the invisible components of the cosmos.

Particle physics research is largely international and collaborative in nature and Royal Holloway is home to the world-leading Centre for Particle Physics Research, led by Professor Glen Cowan.

Professor Cowan commented

"We are very pleased and excited to receive this support to advance the frontier of knowledge about the fundamental particles of Nature. We are confident that STFC's investment at Royal Holloway will lead to new technologies and a new understanding of how the universe works."

Royal Holloway researchers are making an important contribution towards a number of particle physics experiments including at CERN involving the exploitation of the Large Hadron Collider with a substantial group working on the ATLAS experiment, and an experimental Dark Matter group working on the MiniClean DEAP3600 and DMTPC experiments. Research on the accelerator technologies is carried out in the John Adams Institute as well as Research and Development for future detector systems. Research in Theoretical Particle Physics, with focus on the study of Dark Matter in the Universe and Large Hadron Collider Phenomenology, is carried out in the Theoretical Particle Physics Group.

Our teaching across a range of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes is significantly enriched by the quality of the advanced research at Royal Holloway. This exposure to the cutting-edge of international research is an important element of our student experience which often motivates graduates to continue onto PhD research and join our thriving research community.

Professor John Womersley, particle physicist and Chief Executive of STFC said of the funding announcement

“The UK’s Particle physicists are world leaders in expanding our understanding of some of the biggest and deepest questions in science. The support we are announcing today will enable this incredibly successful research community not only to analyse the new data coming from CERN but also to work on developing new applications for particle physics technology and to continue to inspire future generations with the excitement of discovering how the universe works”.

Source: https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/