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Paraskevas Sphicas Professor, Physics Department, NKUA Director, IASA (Institute of Accelerating Systems & Applications) Senior Sciensist, CERN, EP Department Παρασκευάς Σφήκας Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Φυσικής, ΕΚΠΑ Διευθυντής, ΙΕΣΕ (Ινστιτούτο Επιτχυντικών Συστημάτων & Εφαρμογών) Senior Scientist, CERN, EP Department |
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(download CV -- in English) |
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Field of Research High Energy Physics |
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Research Interests Prof. Sphicas studies elementary particles and their interactions through hadronic collisions at the highest available energies: proton-proton collisions at the LHC (CERN) and prior to this proton-antiproton collisions at the SPS (CERN) and Tevatron (Fermilab) accelerators. His colleagues at the CMS experiment as well as himself, together aspire to unravel definitively the mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking (which in the Standard Model of particle physics is attributed to the so-called "Higgs mechanism") and to probe the potential existence of new physics, e.g. Supersymmetry, beyond the Standard Model. |
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Biographical Data Prof. Sphicas received his PhD from MIT, on the UA1 experiment, studying the production of multiple particle jets and searching for new resonances which decay to jets. After the completion of his PhD, he remained with UA1 for two years, as a research scientist at CERN, studying the production of bottom and top quarks. In 1990, he moved overseas to the USA, as a Wilson Fellow at Fermilab working on the CDF experiment and as an assistant professor with the Physics Department at MIT. In 1991, he MIT on a full-time basis. He became Associate Professor in 1994 and Full Professor in 1997. During that period, MIT joined the CDF experiment, as a new collaborating institute, taking the forward calorimeter, the Data Acquisition system (DAQ), and the Third Level Trigger under its responsibility. Moreover, the MIT team on CDF contributed to the discovery of the top quark and also led the development of new flavour-tagging techniques and the first measurement of a fundamental charge-parity parameter (sin2β) in a hadron collider experiment, initiating a rich program of B physics at the Tevatron in subsequent years.
Prof. Sphicas' collaboration with the CMS experiment at CERN began in 1994, when the first wave of US institutes joined the experiment, working at first on the development of the DAQ system and the High Level Trigger. Afterwards, he continued the creation of the Physics Reconstruction and Selection (PRS) teams. Later on, he moved to CERN, leaving the CDF experiment in 2002, in order to focus on the CMS experiment; on the same yes he left MIT and became Professor of Physics at the National And Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA). Since then, he has served the CMS experiment as a supervisor for the PRS project (2001-2004) and the Computing-Physics-Trigger (CPT) project (2005-2006), and as a Physics Coordinator of the experiment (2007-2009). Subsequently, he chaired the Publication Committee of CMS (2012-2013). During the three-year period of 2014-2016 he was the Deputy Spokesperson for the experiment. He is currently engaged in searches for new physics and the upgrade of the Level-1 Trigger system of CMS for the High-Luminosity phase of the LHC (to commence in 2026).
Prof. Sphicas has been a member of numerous international advisory and evaluation committees for funding agencies, scientific organizations and research institutes and universities. As examples, served on the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) of the Department of Energy/National Science Foundation (USA), the Marie-Curie Advisory Group (EU), and as Chair of the High Energy and Particle Physics Division of the European Physical Society (EPS). Currently, he is a member of the European "Physics Preparatory Group" for the New European Strategy in Particle Physics and of the European Committee for Future Accelerators (ECFA). He is also a member of advisory committees for three European universities, a reviewer for all scientific journals in the field of High Energy Physics, and he has participated in over 20 appraisal committees for university faculty and research scientists in Europe and in the USA. He has delivered more than 45 keynote, opening, and summary talks in international conventions and multiple presentations at universities and scientific colloquia.
At MIT, he was awarded the "Buechner Teaching Prize" by the Physics Department and at the NKUA he received in 2016 the "Papanikolaou" prize, which is awarded "in recognition of exceptional scientific achievements of professors of the NKUA". |
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Select Publications (during data-taking at the LHC)
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Select Publications (prior to data-taking at the LHC)
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(rev. 6/2012) |