Profile
Lucy Budge
My CV
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Education:
Norwich High School For Girls, Durham University
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Qualifications:
A Levels: Maths, Further Maths, Physics, Chemistry. Degree: MPhys (master’s degree) Theoretical Physics
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Work History:
Still a student!
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Current Job:
PhD Student
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About Me:
I’m a PhD student at Durham University studying particle physics. I can usually be found with my puppy, eating chocolate. (she/her)
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I grew up in Norwich, and came to Durham Universtiy to study for a degree in Theoretical Physics. Six years on and I’m still here, now doing a PhD in Particle Physics. I live with my boyfriend and golden retriever puppy Emmy (named after mathematician Emmy Noether), we love exploring the countryside in County Durham and Northumberland.
I love to bake and I have made myself popular within the IPPP by bringing in cakes to share, particularly physics based cakes! The one in the picture below contains the answers to the question “what is your favourite equation?”
My current hobbies are limited by chronic (i.e. almost daily) migraines, but when I have energy I enjoy rock climbing (though I haven’t progressed beyond doing it inside yet!). I love sailing and windsurfing; growing up I was a Sea Scout and did a few years of windsurfing racing, however there aren’t many watersports areas around me in Durham. I also like to try my hand at some photography, the picture below is Sycamore Gap on Hadrian’s Wall (Northumberland).
For those of you who like dogs, here are some more pictures of Emmy out and about in the north east of England! During my first three years in Durham I suffered from depression, social anxiety and disordered eating. A big part of keeping myself mentally healthy is making sure I get out of the house enough and don’t get trapped inside my own head. Having a puppy around has been great as I’m out walking her nearly every day and I really enjoy training her and seeing her progress. It gives me a good sense of achievement and is completely separate from my work in physics, so I can keep a good balance between work and the rest of my life.
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My work is theoretical, meaning that I do a lot of maths and a lot of computer programming, but I don’t actually build or run any experiments! Whether I’m working from home or in the office my desk set-up is pretty similar: two or three computer screens and paper (or blackboard) for any work I need to do by hand. The only picture I have has the dog in…
In more detail: I am focusing on predictions for results at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in CERN (the European particle physics research centre, built on the French/Swiss border). In 2012 the Higgs Boson was discovered there, this particle was predicted to exist in the 1960s, and was the last particle to be discovered in the Standard Model, our current best theory for the smallest particles in the universe.
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My Typical Day:
I alternate between working in the office and working from home. As a PhD student most of my time is solely focused on research (either calculations using pen and paper or writing code – or a mixture of both!). I usually have small projects alongside: planning outreach events for example.
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What I'd do with the prize money:
Donate to a charity that increases access to science
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The most exciting thing that's happened this year in my research area:
There hasn’t been much! A lot of particle physics is improving upon previous results, so we can go years without any key breakthroughs. The most recent big discovery was the Higgs Boson in 2012.
The discovery of gravitational waves does have an impact on astroparticle physics – in particular it rules out many modified gravity theories, and therefore strengthens the case for the existence of dark matter. There have been a few smaller things as well: measurements of the Higgs Boson decaying to bottom quarks, and a result from MiniBooNE that continues to suggest we may not understand neutrinos very well. (One interpretation of this result is another neutrino, one that doesn’t interact through the weak force (e.g. beta decays) but other experiments haven’t seen evidence for this.)
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My latest work:
I’m currently working on collider physics – looking at specific processes that happen when we collide protons at experiments like the LHC at CERN.
Specifically I’m studying processes involving the Higgs boson and 4 gluons, this requires a lot of maths since the Higgs doesn’t interact directly with gluons! So we have to add in what’s known as a “loop” (in our case a top quark).
The image below is an example of a loop:
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My favourite misconception about my area of science:
That theoretical physicists are all geeky (white) men, who don’t have good social skills! While the majority are men there are some of us women too. Many of the IPPP members enjoy rock climbing, hiking and running (to name a few sports), we are a friendly and social group who enjoy meeting new people.
Oh, and we aren’t all Star Wars fans.