HDAYS 2014 in Santander came to a close

HDAYS 2014 in Santander came to a close today. It's been a blast, as always. Great people and wonderful location. Excellent overview of the riches of Higgs physics at the LHC. Run II promises to be a very exciting period for Higgs physics that will set the stage for future endeavours. HDAYS 2015 is set for September 14th-18th. Below is the group photo

Lecturing at the International Summer School on TeV Energy Experimental Physics at the Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing

It was an honour to lecture at the first International Summer School on TeV Energy Experimental Physics at the Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing.  Rolf Heuer, the CERN Director General, issued a congratulatory message to the organisers. Greetings from Beijing. 

See below a group picture. One can see an impressive growth in the number of students interested in High-Energy Physics in China. Most of the students were advanced undergraduate and first/second year graduate students taking courses. This is great news for the development of a robust high-energy physics community in China. This is very encouraging in the light of China's plans to build a new accelerator.

The students enjoyed nice facilities with state-of-the-art equipment. In addition to lectures students went through tutorials. This picture was taken towards the end of the school. The vast majority of the students stayed in the school till the end. Discussions were fun.

Gave the experimental Higgs lectures and the experimental summary on searches for non-SUSY physics beyond the Standard Model. It was nice to see students ask good questions and to see the genuine interest in the subject. 

Nobel Prize

The Physics department held a celebratory cake and tea at the news of the Nobel Prize being awarded to Peter Higgs and François Englert.

Wits has a large presence at ATLAS, one of the two general purpose detectors, responsible for the discovery of the Higgs boson.

Well done to Bruce, Trevor and Oana together with their postdocs and PG students!