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Department of Physics

The Cavendish Laboratory
 

Biography

Melissa is an Associate Professor / Senior Lecturer in High Energy Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge and leads the neutrino group. She is a trustee of the Institute of Physics (IOP) and is chair of IOP's Particle Accelerator and Beams High Energy Physics groups.

She obtained her PhD from Queen Mary University of London, working on the T2K Neutrino Oscillation Experiment in Japan, she then became a postdoctoral fellow at Sussex University working on the cryogenic Neutron Electric Dipole Moment Experiment at ILL Grenoble, before joining Imperial College London to work on the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment and High Pressure Gas TPC. She and her colleagues won the Breakthrough Prize in 2016 for their role in Neutrino Oscillation Research.

Her research interests include: short and long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments -- in particular the MicroBooNE and DUNE experiments; and accelerator physics developments towards the Muon Collider. She has been chair of the DUNE Speakers board since 2020.

Research

Melissa has worked across a range of high energy particle physics and accelerator physics experiments, in areas including neutrino physics, neutron electric dipole moments, and muon accelerators.  

Melissa has worked on several neutrino physics experiments: first to prove that all three types of neutrino oscillate and more recently to understand whether neutrinos violate matter/anti-matter symmetry.  Her goal is to understand the true nature of neutrinos and to understand the role they play in our matter dominated Universe.  She currently works on the MicroBooNE, DUNE, AION and MICE experiments.  She is also part of the UK muon collider working group.

 

Publications

Key publications: 

Demonstration of cooling by the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment, MICE Collaboration, Nature, https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.08562.

Indication of Electron Neutrino Appearance from an Accelerator-produced Off-axis Muon Neutrino Beam, T2K Collab, Phys Rev Lett, https://arxiv.org/abs/1106.2822.

First Measurement of Differential Charged Current Quasielastic-like νμ\nu_\muνμ-Argon Scattering Cross Sections with the MicroBooNE Detector. MicroBooNE Collab, Hep_Ex, https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.00108.

Long-baseline neutrino oscillation physics potential of the DUNE experiment,  Dune Collaboration, hep-ex, https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.16043.

Light sterile neutrino sensitivity at the nuSTORM facility, D. Adey et al, Phys Rev D, https://arxiv.org/abs/1402.5250.

First results on ProtoDUNE-SP liquid argon time projection chamber performance from a beam test at the CERN Neutrino Platform, DUNE Collaboration, Instrumentation and Detectors, https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.06722.

AION: An Atom Interferometer Observatory and Network, AION Collab, JCAP, https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.11755.

Off-Axis Characterisation of the CERN T10 Beam for low Momentum Proton Measurements with a High Pressure Gas Time Projection Chamber, S Jones et al, Instrumentation and Detectors, https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.15609.

The reconstruction software for the MICE scintillating fibre trackers, A. Dobbs, C. Hunt, K. Long, J. Pasternak, M.A. Uchida, JINST, https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.05161.

First Muon-Neutrino Disappearance Study with an Off-Axis Beam, T2K Collab, Phys Rev D, https://arxiv.org/abs/1201.1386.

University Associate Professor of Particle Physics
Head of Neutrino group
Dr Melissa  Uchida

Contact Details

Room 933 (Rutherford Bldg)
Cavendish Laboratory
JJ Thomson Avenue
Cambridge
CB3 0HE
+44 (0)1223 337236

Affiliations

Classifications: 
Specialities: 
Person keywords: 
Neutrino Physics
Muon Physics
Data Analysis
Calibration
Accelerator Physics,
Electric Dipole Moments
High Energy Physics
Detector design and development
Reconstruction software and machine learning
Muon accelerators
Flavour Physics