Tara Georgina Shears (born 1969) is a Professor of Physics at the University of Liverpool.

Early life

Shears was born in Salisbury in Wiltshire. She remained in Wiltshire, living in Wootton Rivers and attending the co-educational comprehensive school Pewsey Vale School, where she was inspired by her chemistry teacher. The school had no sixth form, and her parents moved to Wedhampton (near Urchfont), where she attended the co-educational independent school Dauntsey's School, which offered many state scholarships at the time — many of the pupils were state-funded. At A-level she studied Maths, Physics, Chemistry and English, where she was the only female in her Physics class — not uncommon in British co-educational schools, even independent schools. She obtained A grades in all her sixth form exams. Her experience of being the only female in the Physics class would have been an advantage when she attended Imperial College London to study Physics. She obtained a 1st Class honours degree in 1991. She went to the University of Cambridge to complete a PhD in Particle Physics at

Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Corpus Christi College (full name: "The College of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary", often shortened to "Corpus"), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. From the late 14th century through to the early 19th century ...

. She completed a PPARC ( Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, now the Science and Technology Facilities Council since 2007) fellowship at the Victoria University of Manchester.

Career

Particle physics

Shears was awarded a Royal Society Research Fellowship with the University of Liverpool in 2000 to continue her work at the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) experimental collaboration at the Fermilab facility in the USA. In 2004 she joined the LHCb experiment at CERN's

Large Hadron Collider The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundred ...

(LHC) particle accelerator (the world's largest), for which she initiated and developed the electroweak and exotica physics working group.

Physics professor

Shears became the first female Professor of Physics at the University of Liverpool, where she researches the properties of bottom quarks using

hadron collider A hadron collider is a very large particle accelerator built to test the predictions of various theories in particle physics, high-energy physics or nuclear physics by colliding hadrons. A hadron collider uses tunnels to accelerate, store, and colli ...

s, testing the

Standard Model The Standard Model of particle physics is the theory describing three of the four known fundamental forces (electromagnetism, electromagnetic, weak interaction, weak and strong interactions - excluding gravity) in the universe and classifying a ...

theory in the electroweak sector, to seek answers for the reasons that there is so little antimatter in the universe. She is also employed as a science communicator, being able to promote female interest in physics as a role model. She is Chair of the STFC's Education, Training and Careers Committee.STFC

Awards and Major Projects

Shears was awarded a

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...

fellowship to conduct research on the Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP). In 1995 she conducted a project: A Measurement of the B"+ and B"0 Meson Lifetimes and Lifetime Ratio Using the OPAL Detector at LEP.

References

External links

University of Liverpool

Her academic page

Dr. Tara Shears - The Large Hadron Collider in 10' (with english subtitles)

Scientific publications of Tara Shears on INSPIRE-HEP
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shears, Tara 1969 births Academics of the University of Liverpool Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Alumni of Imperial College London British women physicists English physicists Experimental physicists Particle physicists People associated with CERN People educated at Dauntsey's School People from Pewsey People from Salisbury Science education in the United Kingdom Living people