Prof. Simon HANDS BA(Cantab) PhD(Edin) FLSW
I left my native Liverpool in 1980 to study physics first at Cambridge,
then Edinburgh, and have subsequently held research positions at Oxford,
Illinois, Glasgow
and CERN. I was appointed as a PPARC Advanced Fellow in the newly-formed
particle theory group in the Department of Physics
at Swansea in 1993,
where I held a PPARC Senior Research Fellowship for the period 2003-05.
Since November 2011 I have been Director of Research in the
College of Science.
I lecture two courses,
Introduction to Bulk and Thermal Physics,
and Frontiers of Nuclear Physics.
I work in the Swansea lattice group. My research uses
lattice gauge theory to study microscopic properties of matter (find some old
postgrad lecture notes here); in particular
the quark-gluon plasma thought to exist for temperatures in excess of a
trillion degrees, and currently the object of scrutiny at heavy-ion collision
experiments at RHIC and LHC; and the
ultra-dense quark matter possibly to be found in the cores of neutron
stars. An introduction to the field suitable for final-year physics
undergraduates can be found here.
Recently I have become interested in
graphene,
a remarkable state of
carbon formed of a honeycomb sheet only one atom thick.
I am currently Theory Chair of STFC's
Particle Physics Grants Panel.
From 2008-12 I served on the Scientific Board of the European Centre for Theoretical Studies in Nuclear Physics and Related Areas
ECT*
located in Trento in northern Italy. In 2006 I also coordinated a
Doctoral Training Programme there
(click here for a picture).
I was Principal Organiser of the programme
Strong Fields, Integrability and Strings
held at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge
in the second half of 2007
(click here for a picture).
I am currently a member of the International Advisory Committee of the
Extreme QCD conference series, and also of
the editorial board of the
European Physical Journal A.
In 1993 I was one of five winners of a bottle of vintage champagne
offered by the then UK Science Minister, William Waldegrave, for the best
description on one side of an A4 page of the
Higgs Boson
and why we should try
so hard to find it.
In 2000 I was a member of the particle physics panel of
PPARC's
Long Term Science Review.
In 2009 I contributed to a report on
Exaflop Computing in Nuclear
Science for the US Department of Energy.
I am married to artist
Sally Hands
(click here for a physics-related
picture made long ago and far away)
and have one son.
I enjoy
and
and suffer from a lifelong attachment to
.
I am a Fellow of the
Learned Society of Wales and a
member of the
Kidwelly Festival Choir.
You can find a list of my publications on the
SPIRES database, and also on
Google Scholar.
Alternatively check out my academic lineage
here.
Want to take me away from all this? Click here
for a recent CV.
Contact Details
Physics Department
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