The PPE group consists of three permanent academic staff: Steve Playfer, Alan Walker and a new lecturer who is being appointed this summer. The group was formerly led by Ken Peach, who is on leave for the next five years at Rutherford Laboratory. There is also a temporary lecturer (Ian Knowles). The group is funded by a rolling grant from PPARC which currently supports two research associates (Roland Bernet and Steve Gowdy). Cristina Lazzeroni joins the group on 1st October as a new RA on the NA48 experiment.
We have an intake of 1-2 graduate students per year, and currently have two students working on NA48 and one on BABAR. A new student will start on BABAR on October 1st. In addition we supervise final year MPhys students doing four month long experimental or computational projects.
The PPE group has a cluster of six DEC alphas, an HP workstation, and a number of PCs. There is departmental support for these platforms. The group also has a technician and has access to the departmental electronics and mechanical workshops.
There is an active Particle Physics Theory (PPT) group in the department who make calculations in perturbative QCD and in non-perturbative QCD on the lattice (UKQCD). There is a common interest of the PPE and PPT groups in the phenomenology of B meson decays.
The PPE group web page is https://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/Exp/