CERN celebrates Steve Myers’ career with a colloquium tomorrow at 2.30pm in the Main Auditorium.
Watch the webcast here at 2.30pm CET on Friday 13 December
Steve was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland and educated at Queen’s University, where he received a First Class Honours Degree in Electrical and Electronic engineering. He then completed his Ph.D. at Queen’s.
He started at CERN as Engineer-in-Charge for the operation of the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR) before moving on to the Large Electron-Positron Collider (LEP). He took responsibility for the commissioning of LEP, was in charge of the preparation for physics in the 1990s, and was nominated project leader of the upgrade from 1996 until 2000.
In October 2008, he was nominated Director of Accelerators and Technology, "responsible for the operation and exploitation of the whole CERN accelerator complex, with particular emphasis on the LHC and for the development of new projects and technologies." He directed the repair of the LHC after the accident in September 2008 and steered the operation of the collider in 2010, 2011, and 2012. On 4 July 2012 the collider had produced enough events to allow two large LHC experiments, ATLAS and CMS, to discover the Higgs boson.
Steve has been appointed the Head of the newly established Office of Medical Applications at CERN, as of January 2014.
He has been honoured with several awards, including honorary doctorates from the University of Geneva and the Queen’s University of Belfast. He was the recipient of the IOP Duddell Medal in 2003, and was awarded the 2010 International Particle Accelerator Achievement prize for a lifetime of outstanding work in the field. In 2012 he was joint recipient of the European Physical Society “EPS Edison Volta prize”, and more recently in June 2013 he has been awarded an OBE for services to science and technology as part of the Queen’s Birthday Honours.