Research summary
My research interests have been based around the development of Monte Carlo simulations for collider physics experiments, primarily the LHC. As a postdoctoral researcher I dedicated the great majority of my time to the construction of the Herwig++ event generator and, more recently, the Powheg-Box Monte Carlo tool-kit, focusing on high precision simulations. Both of these software packages are now being used in earnest by experimental collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) currently hunting for new elementary particles, such as the newly discovered Higgs boson.


In recent years, together with collaborators in Milan, I have been tackling some of the most technically and theoretically demanding research problems in this field. All of these developments are aimed at providing LHC analysts searching for new physics, sharper theoretical tools: firstly, to enable them to detect very faint new physics signals among the copious standard model physics backgrounds, and, secondly, to determine the nature of any such signal should it be detected. The main achievement in my research to date is the construction of the most accurate and flexible simulation of standard model Higgs boson production, in collaboration with colleagues in Milan and Oxford, to facilitate detailed analysis of its properties.