Pembroke Stipendiary Lecturer in Physics, Dr Xianguo Lu, wins prestigious Ernest Rutherford Fellowship

NEWS |

Congratulations to Pembroke Stipendiary Lecturer, Dr Xianguo Lu, who was recently awarded an Ernest Rutherford Fellowship. The prestigious fellowship is awarded to early career researchers with clear leadership potential, to establish a strong independent research programme. There are nine confirmed fellows for 2019 so far, with each fellowship lasting for five years.

Trained as an experimental nuclear and particle physicist, Dr Lu (nuclear and particle physicist at the University of Oxford Department of Physics) is studying neutrinos and antineutrinos – the lightest matter particles known to date. Understanding the different behaviours between these two particles, Dr Lu comments, would provide the key to understanding the creation of the cosmos.

Dr Lu is currently working on experiments in Japan and Chicago, studying the properties of neutrinos and antineutrinos produced by accelerators. Supported by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), he will join the next generation neutrino experiment, DUNE – the US flagship particle physics project co-led by Pembroke Fellow and Tutor in Physics, Professor Alfons Weber

Dr Lu commented: ‘I feel very lucky to have been given this opportunity! My work is part of the global effort to understand something so fundamental, yet so beyond the reach of human understanding. Will we find the answer? Maybe we will, maybe we won’t; but it feels good to live in a time before this puzzle is solved.’