PhD student award recognition for detector upgrade work

Congratulations to Gary Robertson who has been awarded a prestigious LHCb Early Career Scientist award for the successful delivery of a major upgrade of the RICH detector.

Gary Robertson has been awarded a LHCb Early Career Scientist award by the LHCb (Large Hadron Collider beauty) experiment in a prize ceremony held at CERN. 

Gary, a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Physics and Astronomy, was recognised for his contributions to the successful delivery of a major upgrade of the RICH (Ring-imaging Cherenkov) detector at the experiment. The LHCb experiment is one of four major experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, and is designed to study the decays of ‘heavy flavour’ particles, addressing fundamental questions such as why the universe is made out of matter, rather than anti-matter. The RICH detector at the experiment is used to distinguish between different types of particles produced in proton-proton collisions. The recent upgrade enables the experiment to increase the number of collisions studied per second by more than a factor of five, allowing the collaboration to continue making exciting studies of fundamental physics over the coming years. Gary was a key member of the team responsible for the commissioning and installation of the upgraded RICH detector. 

The LHCb Early Career Scientist award is made annually at CERN in a prize ceremony, and is awarded by the experimental collaboration who operate the LHCb detector. The LHCb collaboration consists of over 1500 scientists from over 20 countries. Gary was one of 10 scientists who received the award this year.