
Vice-President for Science and Innovation: Professor Tara Shears FInstP
Term of office: October 2023-September 2027
Tara is an experimental particle physicist at the University of Liverpool, where she leads an experimental particle physics group that works on the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva.
Her group tests the limits of the Standard Model by making detailed studies of the behaviour of matter and forces, and designs and builds sensitive next-generation particle detectors.
After completing her PhD in 1995, she held Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), CERN and Royal Society University Research fellowships to work on at experiments at CERN and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in the US. She started an academic position at Liverpool in 2007 and became a Professor of Physics in 2012.
Besides research, Tara chaired the principal scientific strategic advisory board for the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) (2020-2023), has acted as a core panel member for Royal Society fellowships (2018-2023) and still acts as a panel member for UK Research and Innovation research fellowships (2018-), and enjoys engaging with different audiences about science.
She is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics.