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Physics ahead in the race toward new discoveries

Physics at Sussex has been given a major boost with several new appointments and thousands of pounds of funding. These achievements have placed it at the forefront of world research into what lies beyond the 'standard model' of particle physics.

The 'standard model' describes all the known elementary particles and their interactions, but physicists believe that it is incomplete, and that we need new discoveries in order to answer fundamental questions about nature. The recent successes at Sussex will place its physicists amongst the leaders in the race towards this goal.

The latest award to the theoretical physicists comes from the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) in the form of funding in excess of £250,000 for two researchers investigating the behaviour of particles beyond the 'standard model'. One of the researchers, Dr Steven Abel, will move to Sussex from CERN, the European particle research centre near Geneva. The other is yet to be appointed. The award "to encourage truly innovative research, demonstrating originality and creativity", is a PPARC Opportunity Award, and out of 115 applications to PPARC only 11 awards were made.

PPARC Chief Executive Professor Ian Halliday said that "the scientists who have won these research awards are those whose proposals stand out for their originality and highest international scientific quality - we explicitly aim to encourage the British scientists who we hope will be the Nobel prize winners of the future."

The award follows hot on the heels of the recent appointments of Dr David Wark and Dr Mauritz Van der Grinten to the Experimental Particle Physics group, and the Joint Infrastructure Fund (JIF) award of over £1.7 million made jointly to the particle experimentalists and Sussex Centre for Atomic and Optical Physics (SCOAP). The experimenters will work closely with the newly appointed theorists in their efforts to probe beyond the 'standard model'.

 

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Friday 11th February 2000

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