Valerie Gibson , also known as Val Gibson, is a professor of Physics and Head of the High Energy Physics group at the University of Cambridge.

Education

Gibson completed a bachelor's degree in Physics at the University of Sheffield in 1983. She achieved a DPhil in experimental particle physics in 1986 from The Queen's College, Oxford.

Career

In 1987 she became a fellow in the Experimental Physics Division at

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 ...

. She joined the

Cavendish Laboratory The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is named ...

in 1989 on a five-year SERC Advanced Fellowship. In 1989 she also received a Stokes Senior Research Fellowship at Pembroke College. She was appointed as University Lecturer and Fellow of

Trinity College Trinity College may refer to: Australia * Trinity Anglican College, an Anglican coeducational primary and secondary school in , New South Wales * Trinity Catholic College, Auburn, a coeducational school in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney, New ...

in 1994. She was awarded a Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Fellowship in 2007. Gibson was appointed Professor in 2009. She began work on the Muon Scattering Experiment at Paul Scherrer Institute. She has worked on the LHCb experiment since the first beam of particles were injected into the

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 ...

in 2008. Gibson has overall responsibility for data acquisition from the ring imaging Cherenkov detectors. Gibson was the UK spokesperson for the LHCb experiment between 2004 and 2008. Today she is chair of the LHCb Collaboration Board and lead of the University of Cambridge's LHCb team. Gibson was part of the discovery of CP violation in the Kaon system.

Public engagement

Gibson is a keen science communicator, interested in taking science to a wider range of audiences. She regularly discusses particle physics discoveries in the media. She developed the card game ''Hunt the Higgs'' and has acted as an adviser for exhibitions at the Science Museum. She is a patron of the Gravity Fields Festival. Alongside her research group, Gibson exhibited at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition. Gibson has spent her career championing women in science. She believes it is her duty "to encourage younger women in their careers and say ‘it is possible’". She has been part of the University of Cambridge's

Athena SWAN Athena SWAN (Scientific Women's Academic Network) is a quality charter mark framework and accreditation scheme established and managed by the UK Equality Challenge Unit (now part of Advance HE) in 2005 that recognises and celebrates good practi ...

and Project Juno committees. In 2014, the University of Cambridge were awarded the first gold

award. She won the WISE Campaign Leader Award in 2013. She is chair of the Institute of Physics Juno panel. In 2016 she launched a three-day residential program for young women interested in physics at the

. In 2016 she won a Royal Society Athena Prize for increasing gender diversity in mathematics, having been nominated by the Institute of Physics. She was a keynote speaker at the 2018 Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics. Gibson was appointed

Officer of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(OBE) in the

2021 New Year Honours The 2021 New Year Honours are appointments by some of the 16 Commonwealth realms to various orders and honours to recognise and reward good works by citizens of those countries. The New Year Honours are awarded as part of the New Year celebration ...

for services to science, women in science and public engagement.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gibson, Valerie Particle physicists Alumni of the University of Oxford Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge British women physicists Alumni of the University of Sheffield 20th-century British physicists 20th-century British women scientists 21st-century British physicists 21st-century British women scientists People associated with CERN People educated at Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School People from Grantham Officers of the Order of the British Empire