I graduated with a First class Bachelor of Science (Hons) degree in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Malta in 2009. Following this he moved to the United Kingdom to further his studies, starting a PhD in Experimental Particle Physics at the University of Sheffield. Alan's PhD research project, entitled “A Search for Supersymmetry with Heavy Flavour Jets Using the ATLAS Detector”, aimed at looking for new particles in data recorded by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.

Modern physics has been extremely successful in explaining the universe we live in and indeed recent news about the discovery of the Higgs boson has shown that our mathematical models of the world are indeed very accurate and contain a lot of predictive power. However they are not without issues. The nature of dark matter is not fully understood and we do not yet know how to unify the different forces which we can observe. These problems can be solved using a class of hypotheses known as Supersymmetry. Should Supersymmetry, often fondly called SUSY, be a correct description of nature, then the LHC should be able to create new particles known as supersymmetric particles. Alan's work, as part of a team of researchers located at a number of universities around the world, focused on devising ways to discover these particles or prove that they do not exist. Though no discoveries were made, the work has helped to statistically exclude the existence of some types of Supersymmetry. The methods and techniques used will also be crucial as the LHC takes more data, in the hope that it will produce more exciting results, and possibly another discovery.

I studied for this degree after being awarded a STEPS scholarship which is part-financed by the E.U. European Social Fund (ESF) under Operational Programme II – Cohesion Policy 2007-2013: ‘Empowering People for More Jobs and a Better Quality of Life’. The award of the scholarship was crucial in allowing him to spend a large portion of his doctorate based on site at CERN in Geneva. Today he is using the skills he has learnt throughout his PhD in a more commercial setting, gaining experience in the financial sector. His ultimate aim is to return to Malta to continue working in this field.

Alan Tua