Join us for a Department of Physics colloquium entitled “ How many new particles remain to be discovered? ” with Professor Mikhail Shaposhnikov, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Please note – The lecture will run from 16:00-17:00 , followed by refreshments from 17:00-18:00 in the Level 8 Common Room of the Blackett Building. Abstract Nature contains several seemingly unrelated mass scales, ranging from neutrino masses to the Planck scale associated with gravity. At the same time, the Standard Model of particle physics and Einstein’s general theory of relativity provide a remarkably successful description of almost all phenomena observed in Nature, with only a few notable exceptions. In this presentation, Professor Shaposhnikov will discuss whether the existence of these widely separated scales, together with the known shortcomings of the Standard Model, points to a rich spectrum of new particles or to an economical extension of known physics, and address the question posed in the title. Biography Mikhail Shaposhnikov studied at Moscow State University and received his PhD from the Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1982. After serving as a research scientist at the Institute for Nuclear Research in Moscow (1982–1991) and a staff physicist at the CERN Theory Division (1991–1998), he became Full Professor of Physics at the University of Lausanne (1998–2003). In 2003, he moved to EPFL, where he headed the Laboratory for Particle Physics and Cosmology until becoming Professor Emeritus in 2021. His research focuses on theoretical particle physics and cosmology, particularly the origin of the baryon asymmetry of the Universe, neutrino physics, dark matter, inflation, gravity and the early Universe.

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