Last week, I officially started a new job as a Junior Professor at the Laboratoire de Physique de Clermont. The lab is part of the Université Clermont Auvergne, in Clermont-Ferrand in France: a busy student town nestling on the edge of the stunning Chaine des Puys range of ancient volcanoes.
Clermont-Ferrand is also the birthplace and home of Michelin tyres (not that the Clermontois ever stop reminding you of this!) And it’s only 3h drive away from CERN, which remains de epicentre of the science I do.
This tenure-track position is an exciting new step in my career: I am bringing my physics programme (on long-lived particles and re-interpretation) and continuing to develop the new “HGTD” fast-timing particle detector. The position comes with funding to help me to build a team to further my research goals: I will be recruiting two PhD students and two postdoctoral research assistants over the next 4 years. I will also be teaching: in fact, I’ve already started lecturing on Mathematics for Physicists, doing Quantum Mechanics demos, and next term I will be doing modules on Particle Physics phenomenology and data analysis!
It’s a real pleasure to be joining such an exciting lab, with wonderful colleagues and outstanding facilities, and I am delighted to be moving to such a beautiful corner of the world where my wife Emma and I can raise our little family. We had a wonderful two years in Geneva/Annecy, and now it’s time for our next adventure.
Louie D. Corpe 