Christopher Parkes

Chris Parkes is an experimental particle physicist working at the University of Manchester. He is the  leader of the Large Hadron Collider Beauty (LHCb) experiment. LHCb is one of the world's largest scientific projects with around 1400 members from 85 institutes in 19 countries.  He was head of the Accelerator, Nuclear and Particle Physics Division in Manchester (2016-2017). He is Principal Investigator and Project Manager for the UK's construction activities of the next generation experiment the LHCb Upgrade, which is currently being installed.  His research is focussed on the discovery of new physics effects through the study of matter anti-matter asymmetries and the development of radiation hard silicon detectors. He led the UK participation in the LHCb experiment from 2012-2016. He was the LHCb Vertex Locator (VELO) Project Leader during the first LHC physics period (2010-2012). He led the W Mass measurement group on the DELPHI experiment at the previous CERN collider, LEP, and was a member of the LEP W working group.

He has been a member of the editorial boards of both DELPHI and LHCb, and of the LHCb membership committee. He has been a member of the UK particle physics funding council panel for new projects (STFC PPRP)and its grants panel (STFC PPGP). He was awarded the Institute Of Physics high energy physics group prize in 2010. He is a CERN guest Professor and was a scientific associate with CERN in 2010-2012, 2018-2019  and an asociate the Institute of particle physics phenomenology in Durham in 2012-2013. He was a visiting professor at the AGH University of Science and Technology, Krakow in 2014.

Professor, University of Manchester (2011-)

CERN Scientific Associate (2010-2011) (2018-2019) & Guest Professor (2020-)

Lecturer / Reader, University of Glasgow (2002-2011)

PPARC (now STFC) Fellow, University of Liverpool (2000-2003)

CERN Fellow (1998-2000)

D.Phil. , University of Oxford, (1994-1998)

BA (hons.), University of Cambridge (1991-1994)

Particle Physics

Please contact Prof. Parkes if you are interested in doing a PhD in particle physics.

Funding opportunities exist for PhD scholarships.