Professor Ian Shipsey FRS, Head of Department, and Henry Moseley Centenary Professor of Physics, has been awarded honorary fellowship of the Institute of Physics in recognition of his leadership in experimental particle physics, particularly the elucidation of the flavour problem and the development of novel instrumentation in many areas of physics, leading the physics community in new scientific directions. Honorary fellowship is the highest accolade presented by the IOP it reflects an individual’s exceptional services to physics. Every member of the IOP’s celebrated community of Honorary Fellows has contributed significantly to the advancement of physics through a range of means, and serves as an ambassador for physics, physicists and the IOP.
Professor Shipsey has made major contributions to key physics questions, including the flavour problem, understanding dark energy and the development of novel applications of quantum instrumentation to fundamental physics.
The flavour problem is the Standard Model‘s inability to explain the three generations of fermions and Professor Shipsey’s crucial measurements include: the most precise determination of four (of the nine) elements of the quark-mixing matrix; rare processes including Bs → muon muon; evidence for Higgs-field generation of the muon mass; first measurement of b-quark production at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC); and Upsilon suppression in heavy-ion collisions, providing evidence for the quark-gluon plasma.
To enable these measurements, Professor Shipsey constructed cutting-edge silicon detectors for the CLEO detector at the Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR), the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) at LHC, and currently ATLAS at LHC and Mu3e at the Paul Scherrer Institute, as well as muon detectors for CLEO and NA31 at CERN, designing the construction facilities.
Leveraging his expertise in silicon, in 2008, Professor Shipsey pioneered the US Department of Energy’s involvement in the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) camera. It is the largest camera ever constructed for astronomy, designed in part to make definitive dark-energy measurements. He chaired the Rubin Dark-Energy Science Collaboration Advisory Board (2016–2017) and was the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) LSST:UK sensors work package principal investigator (2016–2023).
On CMS (2002–2015), Shipsey was the first Quarkonia co-convener. He reorganised the LHC Physics Center at Fermilab, invented the CMS Data Analysis School and created the CMS-LPC Fellows programme; he was elected CMS Collaboration-Board chair (2013–2014).
At the University of Oxford, he created the Kavli-IPMU-Oxford Physics-Graduate-Scholarship programme. After a very successful period as Head of Particle Physics, he was elected Head of Physics in 2018 and re-elected in 2023. Professor Shipsey was instrumental in developing UK Research and Innovation’s Quantum Technologies for Fundamental Physics Programme (2018–2020) and is playing a leading role in establishing the future programme in the UK. He is developing cameras for the MAGIS (US) and AION (UK) networked pathfinder atom interferometers searching for ultralight dark matter and mid-band gravitational waves.
‘It was humbling to learn of this award,’ comments Professor Shipsey. ‘Experimental particle physics is a manifestly collective endeavour. I am incredibly fortunate to work with brilliant, dedicated and inspirational colleagues: students, post docs, technicians, engineers, lab scientists, faculty and administrative staff from several parts of the subject from Oxford, the UK, the US, and across the globe. They have worked so hard together over many years, united in their passion to make progress toward answering some of the great science questions and developing the tools to address them, achieving the scientific results recognised today. I would like to share this recognition with all who contributed.’
Congratulating this year’s new honorary fellows, Institute of Physics President, Professor Sir Keith Burnett, said: ‘Our honorary fellows represent an extraordinary group of physicists who have individually and collectively advanced our field. Each of them has made a significant positive difference to our understanding of, and pursuit of progress in, physics, and represents an example of what we as a community can achieve – on behalf of the Institute of Physics, I warmly congratulate all of them.’