UT Dallas Scientist to Serve as Operations Manager for ATLAS Particle-Physics Experiment

Dr. Kendall Reeves, a research scientist in the UT Dallas Department of Physics, has taken a leadership role in one of the world’s largest science experiments.

Reeves has been appointed to serve as operations manager for the ATLAS experiment, an international high-energy physics project involving some 3,000 international scientists.

The particle-physics experiment, based at the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN research facility in Geneva, is searching for new discoveries in the head-on collisions of protons that have been accelerated to nearly the speed of light. ATLAS is one of two experiments that discovered the Higgs particle, confirming the ideas of theorists who won the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics.

UT Dallas researchers and students are among the experiment’s participants, who represent more than 175 universities and laboratories worldwide.

“It’s a pretty big responsibility and a feather in Kendall’s cap,” said Dr. Joseph Izen, UT Dallas professor of physics and an investigator with the ATLAS experiment. “He really earned this position on the operational team.”

As the ATLAS operations manager, Reeves coordinates the day-to-day installation of detector hardware, cabling, networking and utilities in the ATLAS cavern and the ATLAS control room.

“Movie buffs may recall director Ron Howard’s recreation of the ATLAS experiment and its control room in the movie, Angels & Demons,” Izen said. “Kendall is the person who is overseeing the real version.”

Reeves said he’s honored to have been asked to serve as operations manager and is enjoying the challenge.

“We are currently in the process of upgrading many of the detector elements as well as the electrical, cryogenic, cooling and gas services, plus electrical and optical cables for control and readout,” Reeves said. “This creates a logistical puzzle as interventions on one system often affect many others. So far, it has been a lot of fun.”