Behind-the-scenes @ Blackett Laboratory, Imperial

At this event Members will be able to take part in a guided tour of various labs and facilities in Imperial’s Blackett Laboratory.

Led by Professor Oliver Buchmueller, you will meet researchers on the team involved in cutting-edge physics. With unique access to their work, you will visit labs such as the Cold Atom Lab, CERN-connected labs and the Dark Matter (XLZD) Lab. Professor Stefan Söldner-Rembold, Head of the Physics Department at Imperial, will co-host the visit.

Professor Oliver Buchmueller is a distinguished physicist at Imperial College London, a Visiting Professor at Oxford University, and a Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow. He specialises in unravelling some of the most enigmatic mysteries in contemporary physics, such as dark matter, gravitational waves, and the fundamental forces and particles of the cosmos. Professor Buchmueller plays an integral role in the CMS Collaboration at CERN, a global initiative probing the frontiers of particle physics.

He also spearheads pioneering projects in quantum technology, including the Atom Interferometer Observatory and Network (AION) and the Atomic Experiment for Dark Matter and Gravity Exploration in Space (AEDGE). His research not only deepens our understanding of the universe but also brings together international experts from diverse fields such as astrophysics, quantum technology, earth sciences, cosmology, geodesy, and fundamental physics, expanding the boundaries of what we know about space and time.

Professor Stefan Söldner-Rembold’s research focuses on particle and neutrino physics. He is currently Head of the Department of Physics at Imperial College London and was previously Head of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester. Söldner-Rembold graduated from the University of Bonn and received his doctorate from the Technical University of Munich in 1992, with a research fellowship of the Max Planck Institute. He received his Habilitation in 1996 at the University of Freiburg and was a Heisenberg Fellow of the German Research Foundation from 1999 to 2003, working at CERN.

Söldner-Rembold has been Spokesperson of several large science collaborations: from 2018 until 2022, he led the DUNE collaboration – currently the largest international science project based in the US. Previously, he led the DZero experiment at the Tevatron proton-antiproton collider, located at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory close to Chicago. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the UK’s Institute of Physics; he received a Royal Society Wolfson Research Award, the James Chadwick Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics, and the Max Born Medal and Prize of the German Physical Society. He has served on several advisory and review boards for funding agencies in the UK, the US and Europe, including the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) advising the US Department of Energy and the NSF.