Meet the scientists!

I would argue that particle accelerators are THE tool that enabled the scientific advances of the 20th century.  The largest ones tell us about the nature of matter and the evolution of the universe. Medium-sized ones reveal the secrets of life, let us design new medicines, higher yielding crops and better materials. Small ones save lives through the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

At Daresbury, we are involved in all these applications of particle accelerators.

My own work at the moment is focused on designing and building a “Free-Electron Laser”. Here’s a toy one at Daresbury that we call ALICE An FEL is a video camera for the atomic and molecular scale. At the moment, machines like the Diamond Light Source give us static information at the atomic scale – like a still picture camera. A free-electron laser would, like a video camera, take lots of still pictures separated by short periods of time. These can then be strung together into a moving image. This is just starting to become reality and will revolutionise chemistry, biology and materials science. For the first time, we may be able to understand the dynamics of chemical reactions like catalysis. As an example of a possible application, this knowledge may enable us to design cheap, 90% efficient solar cells.

Another machine we have at Daresbury is called EMMA (Electron Model with Many Applications)  this is the world’s first accelerator of it’s type. If we can make it work the applications are huge – from  better cancer treatments to safer nuclear power. The Mail on Sunday wrote an article about it.

Here I am giving a tour of the accelerators at Daresbury

And here’s an interview with me

Some days are quiet – I sit in my office and read research papers or write computer simulations. Using these, I can predict effects in accelerators, explain observed data, or design new machines.

Some days are busy – I may give a seminar to the institute, or there may be a meeting of physicists from around the world to discuss recent developments in the field.

Some days I run shifts on our paticle accelerators at Daresbury – trying to put theory into practice, or providing beam to experimental users from the universities.

Some days I am abroad – gaining experience on other accelerators around the world, or at an international conference. In the past 2 years i have been to the US, Italy, Sweden, Germany and Switzerland.

Some days are managerial – participating in technical meetings to decide the next research direction, interacting with senior managers at STFC to secure funding, or going to the Institute of Physics in London.

When we can, we run tours for the public of the accelerators at Daresbury. However sometimes this is not possible for operational reasons. We’d use a head mounted camera to give virtual tours of the machines, if this was done over a web link we could answer questions and point things out live.