Making a scientific breakthrough in 2021 requires more than just a microscope – most scientists rely on powerful computers and ingenious software to carry out their research. On Thursday 6th May, Dr. James Catmore gave a public talk live on YouTube on the advanced computing and software techniques used by the ATLAS Experiment.

Dr. Catmore is an experimental particle physicist and former Computing Coordinator for the ATLAS Collaboration (2019–2020). After completing his Ph.D. at Lancaster University in the UK, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher at that institute, before moving to CERN to take up an Experimental Physics Fellowship. He is now a researcher in the High Energy Physics at Oslo University in Norway. He has been a member of ATLAS throughout his career.

In his talk, Dr. Catmore explains how software can be used to reconstruct and analyse billions of particle collisions, and describes how researchers around the world interact with computing in their daily work. He also looks ahead to the “High Luminosity” phase of the Large Hadron Collider starting in the late 2020s, exploring the formidable challenges that it poses for computing and software. Following the conclusion of his talk, Dr. Catmore answered questions from the audience.

This event is part of a series of ATLAS Live Public Talks held on YouTube. You can watch more in the dedicated YouTube playlist.