Jon Butterworth

Early life and education Butterworth was raised in Manchester and educated at Wright Robinson High School in Gorton and Shena Simon Sixth Form College. He studied physics at the University of Oxford, gaining a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1989 followed by a Doctor of Philosophy in particle physics in 1992. His PhD research used the ZEUS particle detector to investigate R-parity violating supersymmetry at the Hadron-Electron Ring Accelerator (HERA) at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, and was supervised by Doug Gingrich

Research and career After completing his PhD, Butterworth spent three years as a postdoctoral researcher for Pennsylvania State University, primarily working in Hamburg on ZEUS. He joined the Department of Physics & Astronomy at UCL in 1995, serving as head of department from 2011 to 2018 , and was appointed Professor of Physics in 2015 .

Butterworth works on particle physics, particularly the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. His research investigates what nature is like at the smallest distances and the highest energies – the fundamental physical laws. include Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw and he has supervised or co-supervised several successful PhD students to completion on the ATLAS experiment, ZEUS and HERA.

Butterworth frequently discusses physics in public, including talks at the Royal Institution and the Wellcome Trust and appearances on Newsnight, Horizon, Channel 4 News, Al Jazeera, and BBC Radio 4's Today Programme and The Infinite Monkey Cage.

His research has been funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and the Royal Society. about the potential impacts of significant funding cuts from STFC in PPAN (Particle Physics, Astronomy and Nuclear Physics) research, including the cancellation of £250 million of planned investment into four major infrastructure projects amid overall annual budget cuts of around 30% (which he described as "catastrophic" ), which could lead to hundreds of PhD and postdoctoral positions being cut, affecting the financial viability of physics departments within UK universities.