Wolfson College Cambridge: Dr Gareth Bird

Position Bye Fellow
School Physical Sciences Department of Physics - The Cavendish Laboratory
Email gareth.bird@cern.ch
Department link Cavendish Laboratory - HEP

Gareth specialises in High Energy Physics, developing software and hardware solutions for the Level-I Calorimeter Trigger of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. He is also pioneering a search for exotic particles using 'Back to the Future' triggers.

Gareth completed his MPhys at the University of Oxford before defending his PhD thesis at the University of Birmingham titled 'Commissioning of the Level-I Calorimeter Trigger Phase-I Upgrade and Searches For High-Mass Heavy Neutral Leptons in the ATLAS Experiment at the LHC'. Gareth now works as a Research Associate for the ATLAS group.

Gareth is committed to inspiring the next generation of physicists. He often seeks opportunities to supervise students, guiding them through their academic journeys and helping them develop a strong foundation in physics.

Gareth enjoys live alternative music, particularly post-punk, post-rock, and shoegaze, especially while he codes and writes.

Gareth's research specializes in bridging the gap between abstract fundamental high-energy physics and cutting-edge software and hardware solutions for processing large volumes of data. In his postdoctoral position, he dedicates his efforts to discovering innovative applications of high-speed hardware to explore the fundamentals of the universe while providing essential expertise for the ATLAS experiment's hardware trigger. This decides which of the 40 million 1MB events a second are interesting enough to store on disk. He has an active interest in long-lived particles and developing new high-speed hardware solutions to uncover previously undetectable experimental signals. He collaborates with theorists to develop new signal models for his 'Back to The Future' trigger.

What's on

Event Type (field_event_type)

Abstract painting featuring a simplified yellow outlined figure beside a faint sepia-toned face rendered on textured canvas.

Art Exhibition: 'Images and Other Conversations'

22/08/2026 at 10.00

Visit Wolfson's latest exhibition 'Images and Other Conversations', featuring work by artists Suleman Aqeel Khilji and Charlotte Winifred Guérard, winners of the Wolfson Royal Academy Schools Graduate Prize.