Professor Simon Hands FLSW

Personal Statement

I am a theoretical and computational physicist with interests spanning particle, nuclear and condensed matter physics. After studies at first Cambridge then Edinburgh universities, followed by postdocs at Oxford, Illinois, Glasgow and CERN, I joined the newly-formed particle theory group at Swansea University in 1993, before moving to the University of Liverpool in 2021.

My research area is lattice field theory, including: QCD under extreme conditions of temperature and baryon density; the electronic structure of layered materials such as graphene; and interacting fermions at strong coupling. Many of my projects exploit high performance computing. In 2009 I led the eight-university UKQCD consortium bid for HPC equipment in an STFC initiative that led to the establishment of the DiRAC facility, and served on the Project Board ever since, becoming co-chair in 2017. I became DiRAC's Community Development Director in 2021.

Over the years my research has been supported by four competitive fellowship awards. I chaired STFC's Particle Physics Grants Panel from 2011-17, and the Scientific Board of the European Centre for Theoretical Nuclear Physics and Related Areas (ECT*) 2010-12.

In 2013 I was elected Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.