Introduction
Nickerson was a graduate student at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied proton collisions at CERN. After that he worked as post-doc, lecturer and then as a professor at Harvard University in the USA on a deep-inelastic muon scattering experiment. He returned to Oxford as a member of the physics faculty in 1990.
Teaching
Nickerson believes that the best way to learn physics is to listen to lectures by those who already understand the subject, read extensively and solve problems. A key element in expediting the learning process is access to experts who can help resolve any difficulties, and the tutorial system is ideal for this. Nickerson expects to discuss physics broadly in tutorials, and will be trying to make sure that students have understood the material.
Research
Nickerson is a particle physicist and a member of the ATLAS collaboration at CERN. There are twelve UK universities participating in the project which altogether has over 2000 physicists involved. For some years Nickerson led the UK team working on the experiment and was chair of the international collaboration board for the tracking detector. He now leads the UK work to build the next generation tracking detector for ATLAS, which will be bigger, better and much more radiation hard. Nickerson is hardware orientated – he leads teams building detectors and makes them work.
Publications
Nickerson’s CV includes numerous publications. There are dozens on results from the ATLAS detector alone – these can be found on the web quite easily.