Brian Edward Cox, OBE

Order of the British Empire

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

 (born 3 March 1968), is a British

British people

The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...

 particle physicist, a Royal Society

Royal Society

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

 University Research Fellow

Research fellow

The title of research fellow is used to denote a research position at a university or similar institution, usually for academic staff or faculty members. A research fellow may act either as an independent investigator or under the supervision of a principal investigator...

 and a professor at the University of Manchester

University of Manchester

The University of Manchester is a public research university located in Manchester, United Kingdom. It is a "red brick" university and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive British universities and the N8 Group...

. He is a member of the High Energy Physics group at the University of Manchester, and works on the ATLAS experiment

ATLAS experiment

ATLAS is one of the six particle detector experiments constructed at the Large Hadron Collider , a new particle accelerator at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland...

 at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN

CERN

The European Organization for Nuclear Research , known as CERN , is an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border...

, near Geneva, Switzerland. He is working on the R&D

Research and development

The phrase research and development , according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, refers to "creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of...

 project of the FP420 experiment

FP420 experiment

The FP420 R&D project or the FP420 experiment was an international collaboration with members from 29 institutes from 10 countries. The aim was to assess the feasibility of installing proton tagging detectors at 420 m from the interaction points of the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large...

 in an international collaboration to upgrade the ATLAS and the CMS experiment

Compact Muon Solenoid

The Compact Muon Solenoid experiment is one of two large general-purpose particle physics detectors built on the proton-proton Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland and France. Approximately 3,600 people from 183 scientific institutes, representing 38 countries form the CMS collaboration...

 by installing additional, smaller detector

Particle detector

In experimental and applied particle physics, nuclear physics, and nuclear engineering, a particle detector, also known as a radiation detector, is a device used to detect, track, and/or identify high-energy particles, such as those produced by nuclear decay, cosmic radiation, or reactions in a...

s at a distance of 420 metres from the interaction points of the main experiments.

He is best known to the public as the presenter of a number of science programmes for the BBC.