Peter Elmer is an experimental particle physicist whose area of expertise is developing the software and computing systems needed to operate and produce scientific results from data-intensive high energy physics experiments. His current research focuses on the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS)(Link is external) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)(Link is external) at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN)(Link is external). In the past he has worked on the ALEPH experiment(Link is external) at CERN and the BaBar experiment(Link is external) at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC)(Link is external).
The LHC experiments have already produced exciting results such as the discovery of the Higgs Boson in 2012, leading to the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics(Link is external). They are now embarking on an evolving series of upgrades and data taking periods over the next 20 years to realize the full scientific potential of this facility. Elmer was a key player in developing the computing model of CMS and managed the implementation of much of the core software used today by the experiment. His current focus is on the R&D and planning for upgrades of the software and computing system required for the Exabyte-scale datasets expected from the high luminosity running at the LHC in the 2020's.