Research Interests
My main research interest is experimental high energy physics, also know as experimental particle physics. My other interests include statistical inference, machine learning, and cosmology, though I am very much an amateur when it comes to the latter.
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Particle Physics
I am intrigued by the immense span of scales with which this subject deals, from neutrino masses to the Planck mass, and the extraordinary fact that we can make meaningful and precise statements about the associated phenomena. It didn't have to be this way, of course; nature could have been inscrutably unkind. But, amazingly, we have the Standard Model, perhaps the most extraordinary intellectual achievement of Homo Sapiens.
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Statistical Inference
Since my first visit to CERN in 1983 (to consult with Dr. Fred James), I have come to appreciate the power, breadth, and beauty of this subject. It is a subject rife with controversy, which was a big surprise to me. The controversies made it clear that much of what we do in statistical inference is ultimately guided by intellectual taste. Assuming that the mathematics is correct, there is no such thing as "the right answer", rather there are many "right answers"!
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Machine Learning
Having spent billions of dollars of tax payers' money to create fabulous scientific instruments that yield huge quantities of data, it would be unconscionable not to spend a relative pittance to extract as much information as possible from these data. It is now widely accepted that machine learning makes it possible to do just that. The 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson is a spectacular example of the power of machine learning for creating highly effective functions to extract signals masked by noise.
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Cosmology
In my view, Einstein's theory of spacetime, general relativity, is the most beautiful theory in physics. Alas particle physicists tend to regard every theory as a JAFT (just another field theory!) complete with its own bosonic excitations, here spin-2 gravitons. My hope is that one day, particle physicists will wholeheartedly embrace the geometrical view of physics and that geometry will be the ultimate explicatum.