UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship success

Congratulations to Dr William Barter who has been awarded a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Future Leaders Fellowship, and will be joining the School of Physics and Astronomy’s Particle Physics Experiment Group.

Fellowship scheme 

The UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships have been instigated to ensure the strong supply of talented individuals needed for a vibrant environment for research and innovation in the UK.   

In this round, 84 pioneering researchers, tech entrepreneurs, business leaders and innovators across different sectors and disciplines in Scotland will benefit from a £98 million cash boost to convert their innovative ideas to transformational products and services. 

On the discovery of new particles

William is a particle physicist, leading research and research teams at the Large Hadron Collider, with over a decade of experience studying the weak force (which is responsible for radioactivity) and differences between matter and anti-matter. With the award of the Future Leaders Fellowship, William seeks the discovery of new fundamental particles. In our best theory of particle interactions at a quantum level, electrons are expected to behave in the same way as their heavier counterparts, the muon and the tau-lepton. However, recent measurements suggest that muons and electrons behave differently. Attempts to explain these results invoke new, currently unknown, fundamental particles, and also suggest that clear signs of this 'new physics' will be visible in analogous measurements of tau-leptons. William will develop novel techniques to detect these tau-leptons, and will use these techniques to search for definitive evidence of new particles. Such a discovery would herald a paradigm shift in our understanding of the universe.