Astbury Lecturer Biographies
Biography: Prof. Sir Tejinder Singh Virdee, FRS
Tejinder (Jim) Virdee is Professor of Physics at Imperial College, London. After the UA1 experiment (1990), where W and Z bosons were discovered, Virdee concentrated on the physics and experimentation at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. He is one of the two founding fathers of the Compact Muon Solenoid Collaboration (CMS) at the LHC and has played a major role in all phases of the experiment, from conception and design, through construction to the extraction of science that have already lasted around 25 years. He was involved in almost all the major choices made for the experiment and predictions of the physics performance. He pioneered some of the techniques used in its calorimeters crucial for the discovery of a Higgs boson announced by the CMS experiment in July 2012, along with the sister experiment ATLAS.
Virdee was the Spokesperson of the CMS Collaboration for three years, from 2007, a period that included the start of collision data taking, and was its Deputy Spokesperson from 1993 to 2006.
Virdee’s current work involves studies of the newly found Higgs boson, search for physics beyond the standard model of particle physics and the design of the upgrades of the CMS detector for very high luminosity LHC running that is due to start in mid-2020’s. He is pioneering a novel technique to replace CMS’ endcap calorimetry that uses silicon sensors and implements very fine lateral and longitudinal segmentation.
Amongst the prizes he has won is the 2009 UK Institute of Physics (IOP) Chadwick Medal and prize, the 2013 European Physical Society-HEPP prize, the 2013 Fundamental Physics Prize and the 2015 IOP Glazebrook Medal and Prize.
Virdee was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 2012 and was made Knight Bachelor in the 2014 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.