Profile

I’ve been climbing for about 8 years now, and have enjoyed hiking and camping for as long as I can remember. I’ve always been very enthusiastic when it comes to making things – I’ve made quadcopter drones, done blacksmithing and played around with AI and machine learning. I own two metal lathes (one small, one not so small!) and have an eclectic mix of projects on the go at any point in time. I’m currently very interested in 3D-printing. I’m also an enthusiastic if not always successful home cook: once I try something, I like to keep trying until I get it perfect – think DIY pizza every day for a week!

The Standard Model of particle physics describes what we currently think are the most basic building blocks of our world – “elementary particles” that are not made up out of other smaller particles. It describes the properties of these elementary particles, and how their properties change as they interact with one another. “Quarks” are one type of elementary particle. They make up most of the visible matter in the universe. However, in nature they never exist on their own but are instead found bound up together with other quarks – either in pairs or in groups of three. These bound collections of quarks, known as “hadrons”, are held together by gluons, another type of elementary particle. The dynamics of the quarks and gluons predicted by the Standard Model is very complicated, and as such making predictions about the properties of hadrons is challenging.

In order to fully test the Standard Model at experiments such as the Large Hadron Collider, we need to be predict the properties of hadrons. This is what my research focuses on. I use supercomputers to simulate the quarks and gluons described by the Standard Model, approximating the space they live on as a very fine grid.