This week during our meeting journal club will host a speaker from St. Olaf.
Dr. Shoaib Munir will join us Wednesday at 5pm in Anderson 036 to speak about quantum particles and high energy physics.
High-energy physics: a very brief primer
Modern high energy physics aims to understand the fundamental building blocks of nature – the quantum particles – and how their properties and evolution in time have resulted in the Universe as we observe it today. Starting with a quick overview of the paradigm shift in our way of thinking that the advent of quantum physics caused in the early 20th century, I will discuss the most important questions, tools, and methods in the field of particle physics, as well as its biggest short-term goals and challenges.
Shoaib Munir obtained his PhD degree in theoretical high energy physics from the University of Southampton, UK, in 2007. He has extensive research experience in particle physics phenomenology, with a primary focus on the additional Higgs bosons predicted in frameworks of particle physics beyond the Standard Model. He has held postdoctoral research fellowships in Mexico, Poland, Sweden, and South Korea. He has also previously held faculty positions at the COMSATS Institute of Information Technology in his hometown of Lahore, Pakistan, and at the East African Institute of Fundamental Research, in Kigali-Rwanda, which is a UNESCO Category-2 partner institute of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. He is currently visiting faculty at St. Olaf College.