The Stirling Lecture for 2009 is to be given by Professor Brian Cox, of Manchester University. The lecture is entitled ``CERN's Big Bang Machine: The Large Hadron Collider" and will be given in the Applebey Lecture Theatre, Science Laboratories on Thursday 10th December at 5.15pm. Brian Cox is a particle physicist, a Royal Society research fellow, and a professor at the University of Manchester. He is a member of the High Energy Physics group at the University of Manchester, and works on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. He is also leading the an international collaboration to upgrade the ATLAS and the CMS experiments by installing additional, smaller detectors at a distance of 420 meters from the interaction points of the main experiments.    Cox has received many awards for his efforts to publicise science. In 2002 he was elected an International Fellow of the Explorers Club and in 2006 Cox received the British Association Lord...

Together with Glasgow University,  the IPPP co-sponsored a public talk by Professor Fabiola Gianotti at the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 12 May 2008.   The most powerful accelerator ever built, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), will start operation at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, in Summer 2008. It will smash proton beams of unprecedented intensity and energy, and huge high-technology detectors will record the products of the collisions. The LHC should be able to solve several mysteries, such as what is the origin of dark matter? Why do elementary articles have different masses, so that the heaviest quark weigh as much as a Gold atom and the photon weigh ... nothing? Is this due to the famous Higgs boson, the particle postulated in 1964 by Professor Peter Higgs FRS FRSE from the University of Edinburgh? This lecture will present the goals and challenges of one of the biggest and most difficult projects in science ever. People of all ages flocked to hear how the forthcoming...

The IPPP Associates for 2009-2010 and their associated projects are listed below. Costas Andreopoulos (RAL)     GENIE Universal Neutrino Monte Carlo Generator Alan Barr, Sinead Farrington, Claire Gwenlan (Oxford)     Vector Boson Fusion and Monte Carlo understanding at Hadron Colliders Thomas Binoth (Edinburgh)     Higher order amplitudes for LHC Monte-Carlo tools Mrinal Dasgupta and Jeff Forshaw (Manchester)     Soft gluon technology for the LHC era Nick Evans (Southampton)     Holographic Modelling of Hadronization Nikolas Kauer (RHUL)     Optimising predictions for Higgs/BSM searches at the LHC Paul Newman (Birmingham)     Strong Interactions and Low x Physics at HERA and Beyond Mike Seymour(Manchester)     Herwig++ User Support Robert Thorne (UCL)     QCD and parton distributions for hadron colliders Matthew Wingate (Cambridge)     Lattice QCD and Flavour Physics The aim of this programme is to support particle physics...

IPPP postdoctoral researcher Daniel Maitre was awarded the Centro Stefano Franscini Best Presentation by a Young Researcher Award at the 9th International Symposium on Radiative Corrections (Applications of Quantum Field Theory to Phenomenology) in Ascona, Switzerland last week.  He received a framed certificate and 500SF. Daniel presented his work on W+3 jet production at the Tevatron and Large Hadron Collider at next-to-leading order in the strong coupling based on the BlackHat and Sherpa packages.  Daniel (second from right) can be seen receiving his prize with (left to right) Claudia Lafranchi Cattaneo, the manager of the Ascona Office of the Centro Stefano Franscini, the conference organiser Thomas Gehrmann (Zurich), the closing speaker Keith Ellis (Fermilab). A copy of Daniels winning presentation can be found via the link here.

Applications are invited for up to four posts as lecturer, tenable within the Department of Physics, in association with the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology (IPPP). The successful applicants will have expertise in particle physics phenomenology including one or more of the following areas; beyond the standard model physics, electroweak and Higgs physics, flavour physics, model building, Monte Carlo simulations, neutrino physics, particle astrophysics and strong interactions. Applications from candidates with a strong record of engagement with experimental groups are encouraged. Informal enquiries, expressions of interest, or names of potentially interested parties should be sent as soon as possible, and in confidence, to: the Director of the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology, Professor Nigel Glover, E.W.N.Glover@durham.ac.uk. The IPPP was founded in 2000 as a joint venture of the University and the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and aims...

Applications are invited for the post of Professor of Particle Physics Phenomenology, tenable within the Department of Physics, in association with the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology (IPPP). The successful applicant will have expertise in particle physics phenomenology including one or more of the following areas; beyond the standard model physics, electroweak and Higgs physics, flavour physics, model building, Monte Carlo simulations, neutrino physics, particle astrophysics and strong interactions. He or she will be expected to play a substantial role in the management of the IPPP and have the potential to be a future Director of the Institute. Applications from candidates with a strong record of engagement with experimental groups are encouraged. Informal enquiries, expressions of interest, or names of potentially interested parties should be sent as soon as possible, and in confidence, to: the Director of the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology, Professor...

Michael Pennington, Professor of Physics and Dean for Educational Outreach, has been appointed Chair of the Program Advisory Committee (PAC) of the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) in Virginia, USA, till 2011 by the Lab Director, Hugh Montgomery. Mike has served as a member of the PAC since 2005. JLab pursues experimental research in nuclear and particle physics with the aim of understanding the strong and electroweak interactions of quarks, and how their confinement underpins the structure of nuclear matter. JLab is undergoing a $310M upgrade to accelerate electron beams to higher energy and provide a new experimental hall (to add to the existing three) dedicated to unravelling the spectrum of the strong interaction between quarks and gluons. The Lab’s Associate Director, Larry Cardman says the “next two years will be critical for establishing the research program and its priorities for the Upgrade and for cementing the scientific case for important new...

The Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology (IPPP) is inviting applications from UK-based academics to hold an IPPP Associateship from 1 October 2009. Each Associateship will have a value of £4000 per annum and is funded by Durham University, through the IPPP. The aim of this programme is to support particle physics phenomenology research in the UK. The Associateships will be awarded to individuals to support their research programme. For example, the funds could be used for visits of the Associate or their students to IPPP, IPPP staff/PDRA/student visits to the Associate's institution, travel of Associate or their students to conferences, visitors to the Associate's institution, partial teaching buy-outs, etc. The Associateships will be awarded on the basis of scientific excellence bearing in mind the need to balance activity in different areas of phenomenological research including beyond the standard model physics, electroweak and Higgs physics, flavour physics, model...

At the Institute of Physics, High Energy Particle Physics Group annual meeting in Oxford last week, Peter Richardson was awarded the Institute of Physics, High Energy Particle Physics Group Prize for 2009. Dr Richardson is an expert in the Monte Carlo simulation of high energy particle physics events, and his codes are, or have been, used by experimenters involved in all of the major experiments at CERN, DESY and Fermilab. He has been responsible for a series of breakthroughs and improvements in the quality of the simulation, not only within the context of the Standard Model of particle physics, but, perhaps more importantly in the large numbers of new physics phenomena that are eagerly anticipated at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Richardson is the world expert at developing event generation of new physics models – R-parity violating supersymmetry, supersymmetry with full spin correlations, models with extra space time dimensions and mini black hole production. To this end, he...

Founding IPPP member, Professor Michael Pennington has been named as one of the Outstanding Referees of the Physical Review and Physical Review Letters for 2009. Initiated in 2008, the American Physical Society Outstanding Referee program expresses appreciation for the essential work that anonymous peer reviewers do for the APS journals including Physical Review D and Physical Review Letters. This is a highly selective award and only a small percentage of more than 42,000 referees are honored each year with the Outstanding Referee designation. Selections are made based on the number, quality, and timeliness of referee reports as collected in a database over the last 20 years. More than 34,400 manuscripts were  submitted in 2008 and most of the referees chosen in the first two years of the program have given dedicated service for many years. The 2009 honorees come from 35 different countries, with large contingents from the US, Germany, UK, Canada, and France. The names of all...

The IPPP has received a new ten-year grant from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) to continue its world-class research into some of the Universe’s greatest secrets such as the mysteries surrounding antimatter and dark matter, the possibility of extra space-time dimensions and the existence of the elusive Higgs boson.  The IPPP is funded in partnership between the STFC and Durham University and the new grant will be enhanced by increased investment from the University. Durham University’s increased investment will provide an extension to the Ogden Centre, which houses the IPPP, massively upgraded computer facilities and new permanent academic appointments. It will also mean additional research positions and further funding for workshops, visitors and travel to support the wider UK phenomenology community. Since its creation in 2000, the IPPP has been a tremendous success and has revitalised phenomenology in the UK. Professor Nigel Glover, Director of the...

The new IPPP Grid cluster is now available for use and has been in full operation since the beginning of January 2009.  The new cluster now provides 1 Million SpecInt2k - a factor of 12 increase on the old cluster.  This is a significant improvement in computational power to assist particle physics research through the pheno VO and other grid users. The new cluster consists of 3 new front end machines and 84 new worker nodes.  Using twin-servers, two machines can be packed in a 1U server, providing huge CPU power in a small area.  A total of 672 job slots are available to provide the 1 M SpecInt2k - with each worker node consisting of: Dual processor, quad core providing 8 cores per machine. Low-power Xeon L5430 for greater power efficiency and lower running costs. 16GB RAM per machine, providing 2GB per core. Dual bonded gigabit ethernet 0.5TB Hard Disk Installed with the Scientific Linux 4.7 OS A new high spec UI is available to allow the preparation, submission and retrieval...