Lancaster’s Vice-Chancellor, Mark E. Smith, was given a VIP tour of CERN last December, in order to see some of the exciting research being done by Lancaster and Cockcroft staff at CERN. The visit included a tour of CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) by Sir Tejinder Virdee (Imperial College), a previous spokesperson of the CMS Collaboration, and the ATLAS visitor centre with David Charlton (University of Birmingham), the current spokesperson of the ATLAS Collaboration. The Vice-Chancellor was joined on the trip by Peter Ratoff (HoD, Physics and Director of the Cockcroft Institute) and Lancaster staff leading research projects based at CERN, Graeme Burt (Cockcroft Institute) and Roger Jones.
Lancaster have research groups in both Physics and Engineering that are involved in the ATLAS detector, the LHC accelerator upgrade and the next generation Compact Linear Collider at CERN. Both departments also are members of the Cockcroft Institute of Accelerator Science and Technology. The Lancaster group is working on many major questions; the origin of mass and the properties of the Higgs particle; the reason for the absence of antimatter in our everyday world; and the search for candidates to explain the mysterious dark matter that makes up much of the universe. After visiting CMS and ATLAS, the Vice-Chancellor met some of the Lancaster staff and students who are based at CERN. The day was concluded with a meeting with the recently confirmed incoming CERN Director-General, Fabiola Gianotti.
Sir Tejinder Virdee (Imperial College), Roger Jones, Mark E Smith, Graeme Burt, Peter Ratoff, Oliver Bruning (Deputy Head of CERN Beams Department) next to the CMS detector at CERN