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Professor Adrian Bevan

Adrian

Head of School | Professor of Physics

Email: a.j.bevan@qmul.ac.uk
Room Number: G. O. Jones Building, Room 106
Website: https://pprc.qmul.ac.uk/~bevan/abevan.html

Profile

https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-bevan-b70a607bAdrian Bevan is a member of the Particle Physics Research Centre. He is a Turing Fellow, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. His research interests focus on the search for physics beyond the Standard Model at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, where he applies modern data science techniques, including deep learning to data from CERN, and works on the construction of next generation detectors for that facility.  He is also working on development of organic radiation detectors and recently joined the DUNE collaboration to search for CP violation in neutrinos.

Adrian completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2000 working on the NA48 experiment at CERN. He then moved to the University of Liverpool as a Senior Postdoctoral Research Associate to work on the BaBar experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre (now SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory) operated by Stanford in California. In 2003 he was awarded a Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council personal Fellowship to continue working on BaBar, and joined QMUL in 2006 as a Lecturer. In 2010 he was appointed to the position of Reader in Particle Physics, and in 2016 he became a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and was appointed as a Professor in 2020.

CP violation is the study of matter-antimatter asymmetry.  Adrian studied this phenomenon for much of his career, searching for and measuring different CP violation effects in K, B and D mesons using data from NA47 and BaBar, working on designing new experiments to continue that study, and also writing a number of phenomenology papers. His phenomenology work includes the study of the discrete symmetries C, P, T, CP and CPT.  

From 2008 through 2013 Adrian led the physics programme of a proposed Super Flavour Factory, referred to as the SuperB experiment. His group also worked on silicon detector development related to the design and construction of a vertex detector for SuperB. In 2008 he started work on the ATLAS tracker upgrade programme at CERN, and has led the QMUL group effort in this area since 2010.  We are proud contributors to the ATLAS Inner Tracker upgrade project.   In 2012 he joined the ATLAS experiment at CERN to study rare decays and properties of the Higgs boson.  

Adrian has worked on the development of CMOS based pixel technology for possible use in future experiments such as SuperB and the upgrade of the ATLAS tracker, silicon trackers for the ATLAS experiment for the High Luminosity LHC and CERN, as well as developing new technology for radiation detection. This generic work includes ultra thin (low mass) tracking detectors and Helium-3 alternative thermal neutron detectors.  This work includes the development of organic semiconductor radiation detectors.

 

Teaching

Adrian teaches the following courses

In the past he have also taught undergraduate courses entitled

  • Introduction to C++ Programming [Deputy Module Organiser]
  • Mathematical Techniques 1 [Module Organiser]
  • Mathematical Techniques 2 [Deputy Module Organiser]
  • Mechanics and Materials [Deputy Module Organiser]
  • Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics  [Deputy Module Organiser]
  • Practical Machine Learning (SUM401N, Undergraduate)
  • Quantum Mechanics B [Module Organiser/Deputy Module Organiser]
  • Scientific Measurements [Module Organiser/Deputy Module Organiser]
  • Statistical Data Analysis (SPA6328, Undergraduate)

Administrative positions:

  • Industry liaison [2018-date]
  • Subject Exam Board Chair in the School of Physics and Astronomy [2016-2018]
  • Head of Department of Physics and Astronomy [2021-date]
  • Deputy Head of the School of Physical and Chemical Sciences [2022-date]

Over the years I have given graduate lectures on B Physics (Dubna, 2008), CP violation (London), Flavor Physics at e+e- machines (Valencia, 2013), Multivariate Analysis (SLAC, 2009, 2011), UNIX and ROOT (London and Liverpool), and tutorials on the use of fitting and multivariate analysis tools (Durham, 2007).  More recently I have focused on dedicated Machine Learning graduate lectures for GRADnet, UK Particle Physics and ATLAS UK communities.  Please see my teaching web page for a comprehensive list of these courses.

Postgraduate Students

 

Research

Research Interests:

Adrian's interests include the development of novel radiation detectors for industrial and scientific applications, including future colliders.  Since 2008 he has been working on upgrading the silicon tracking system for the ATLAS experiment at CERN.  More recently interests include developing technology for safeguarding and nuclear decommissioning work. His particle physics interests include understanding the behaviour of nature under discrete symmetries, such as CP (matter-antimatter), T (time-reversal) and CPT.   He also has a keen interest in understanding the nature of the Higgs boson and searching for new particles such as the magnetic monopole.  A common feature throughout these research activities is the use of modern algorithms and machine learning techniques in order to obtain the most information from the underlying data.  

Committees

  • STFC Particle Physics Technology Advisory Panel (2020 - present)
  • STFC Particle Physics Advisory Panel (2020 - present)
  • STFC Oversight committee for the LHCb upgrade (2015 - present)
  • STFC Oversight committee for the ALICE upgrade and JLab programme(2015 - 2021)
  • STFC Project Peer Review Panel (2014, 2015)
  • STFC Particle Physics User Advisory Committee (2008 - 2011)

Other activities

He been called upon to review proposals for research councils in Canada, France, Slovenia, Switzerland, the UK and for the ERC.  This includes working on visiting panels for a number of large projects in the UK including DUNE and LSST.  He has also worked on the STFC mid-term review of the CMS upgrade.

He referees papers for the following journals: EPJC, JHEP, J Phys G and Nature Physics and is on the Editorial Board of the journals Chinese Physics C and Machine Learning in Science and Technology.

He has also organised almost 30 of national and international meetings over the years.  Adrian organised the 1st SuperB Collaboration meeting (Sept. 2011), and  the Institute of Physics Joint HEPP and APP group meeting 2012, which was held at QMUL, a workshop on the Interplay between Particle and Astroparticle physics held in 2014 (IPA 2014) and 50 years of CP Violation also in 2014.

Adrian was one of five general editors of the Physics of the B Factories book project, which has been published in EPJC.  This book provides a pedagogical review of the B factories, as well as the analysis tools and results that were developed from 1999-2012 in order to test the Standard Model of Particle Physics.  The PBF is available on the archive.

In addition to this he has written a book on statistics published by Cambridge University Press entitled "Statistical data analysis for the physical sciences".

Examples of research funding:

Grants

Adrian Bevan's research is/has been funded by the following main grant awards and research contracts

  • Particle Physics Research Centre Consolidated Grant (STFC), 2019 [£2.3M, PI]
  • STFC Futures Capital Equipment Call Grant, (STFC) 2021 [181k, PI]
  • Innovation Partnership Scheme grant to work on diamond detector development (STFC/Micron Semiconductor Ltd.) 2021 [448k, PI]
  • Evaluating the suitability of Organic Semiconductor Detectors for Nuclear Security (STFC/AWE), 2021 [£82k, PI]
  • Organic Neutron Detector Development For Future Nuclear Threat Reduction and Dark Matter Experiments (STFC/AWE), 2021 [£119k, PI]
  • Diamond Detector Development (STFC), 2020 [£18.5k, PI]
  • Organic Semiconductor Neutron Detectors for Dark Matter (STFC), 2019 [£180k, PI]
  • Applications of organic sensors for radiation detection (AWE), 2019 [£48k, PI]
  • Zero support Mass Detectors (STFC), 2019 [180k, PI]
  • Position Sensitive Organic Neutron Detectors (QMI), 2019 [£50k, PI]
  • Particle Physics Research Centre Consolidated Grant (STFC), 2019 [£2.6M, PI]
  • ATLAS Upgrade (STFC), 2018, [£445k, PI]
  • Applications of organic sensors for radiation detection (AWE), 2017, [£179k, PI]
  • ATLAS Upgrade (STFC), 2016, [£15K, PI]
  • Thin silicon and organic detector development (STFC), 2016, [£30K, PI]
  • Organic detector development (STFC), 2015, [£10K, PI]
  • PPRC Consolidated Grant (STFC), 2015, [£3.3M, Co-I]
  • ATLAS Upgrade (STFC), 2014, [£185K, PI]
  • Detector Development Infrastructure Grant (STFC), 2014, [£33K, Co-I]
  • Arachnid (STFC), 2011, [£118K, PI]
  • PPRC Rolling Grant (STFC), 2010, [£4.0M, Co-I]
  • PPRC Rolling Grant (STFC), 2009, [£2.3M, Co-I]
  • Joint Independent Project (Royal Society), 2007, [£12K, PI]
  • PPRC Rolling Grant (STFC), 2006, [£5.5M, Co-I]
  • Independent Fellowship (PPARC), 2003, [£250K, PI]

This corresponds to a career total of £22M, with £7.9M as PI.

Publications

A full list of Adrian's publications can be found on INSPIRE.  Here is a selection of his recent work:

  • Solution-Processed Donor–Acceptor Poly(3-hexylthiophene):Phenyl-C61-butyric Acid Methyl Ester Diodes for Low-Voltage alpha Particle Detection, ACS Appl. Mat. Interfaces 2021 13, 5, 6470-6479
    Search for resonant and non-resonant Higgs boson pair production in the bbtautau decay channel in pppp collisions atsqrt(s)=13 TeV with the ATLAS detector (Phys. Rev. Lett. 121 (2018) 19, 191801.)
  • Angular Analysis of B to K*mumu decays in pp colisions at sqrt(s)=8TeV (J. High Energ. Phys. 10 (2018) 047.)
  • Measurements of charge CP asymmetries in b-hadron decays using top-quark events collected by the ATLAS detector in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=8TeV (J. High Energ. Phys. 02 (2017) 71.)
  • Testing discrete symmetries at a super tau-charm factory, Front. Phys 11 (2016) 111401.
  • The Physics of the B Factories, Eur. Phys. J. C 74 (2014) 3026 (Springer book).
  • Bounding hadronic uncertainties in c to u decays, Phys. Rev. D90 (2014) 094028.
  • The Physics of Heavy Flavours at SuperB, J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys. 39 (2012) 023001.
  • Time-dependent CP asymmetries in D and B decays, PRD 84 114009 (2011).
  • Measurement of the unitarity triangle angle beta using B meson decay to Charmonium final states, Phy. Rev. D 79 072009, 2009 [c-cbar-K0(*)], and PRL 101, 021801 (2008) [J/ψ π0].
  • Measurement of the unitarity triangle angle alpha using B decays into ρ+ρ-, PRD 76, 052007 (2007).

Adrian's unitarity triangle angle measurements of α and β together provide a significant test of the CKM matrix, and in particular the Kobayashi-Maskawa mechanism for CP violation in the Standard Model.  Kobayashi and Maskawa shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2008 as a result of measurements such as these confirming their model of CP violation.

His paper on time-dependent CP asymmetries in D and B decays [PRD 84 114009 (2011)] outlines an experimental programme that can be used to test the CKM matrix description of CP violation for weak decays of up-type quarks.  In addition this paper proposes a method for measuring the charm mixing parameters that are expected to provide a more precise determination of the mixing phase than existing techniques.

A comprehensive list of Adrian's lead author publications can be found at http://pprc.qmul.ac.uk/~bevan/abevan.html.  In addition to academic articles, he has written a book on statistics published by Cambridge University Press entitled "Statistical data analysis for the physical sciences".

 

Supervision

This is not an exhaustive list and I am happy to discuss other project possibilities.

Project Title
Search for Magnetic Monopoles
Applications of Machine Learning to Higgs Physics
Detector development
ATLAS Inner Tracker (ITK) Upgrade

 

Adrian has supervised a number of PhD students while at QMUL. These are listed below (past students have completion dates indicated)

  • Aled Horner
  • Choudhry Zahaab Amjad
  • Marvin Taylor
  • Fani Eirini Taifakou
  • Natasha Hehir
  • Tom Charman (2nd supervisor)
  • Muhammad Ali
  • Lewis Milward (2nd supervisor)
  • Rodrigo Gamboa-Goni (PhD 2021)
  • Xiaoqi Lui (PhD 2019, 2nd supervisor)
  • David Lewis (2nd supervisor)
  • Tom Stevenson (PhD 2018)
  • Tamsin Nooney (PhD 2016)
  • Gianluca Inguglia (PhD 2014)
  • Michael Sigamani (PhD 2009, 2nd supervisor)
  • Chukwudi Clarke (PhD 2009, 2nd supervisor)

In addition to this he has supervised the work of students at a number of other institutes including Bristol, Imperial College, Liverpool and Wisconsin through his research affiliations to various experiments.

Performance

Presentations

Adrian has given over 100 talks and seminars in a number of countries round the world, including Australia, China, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Poland, South Korea, Sweeden, Switzerland, Taiwan, UK, and US.  These include seminars at the following major particle physics laboratories: DESY, DESY Zeuthen, IHEP, KEK, and at SLAC.  Adrian also gives general talks on particle physics to public audiences. Some recent highlights are listed below

A comprehensive list of Adrian's talks can be found at http://pprc.qmul.ac.uk/~bevan/talks.html.  If you would like Adrian to give a talk on particle physics suitable for a general audience or at a particular conference, please drop him an e-mail to ask about availability.

 

Adrian has organised a number of workshops and conferences over the years, including the "50 years of CP violation" conference in 2014.  He also started the conference series on the Interplay between Particle and Astroparticle physics in 2014.

 

Grants

 

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