Past Student Projects & Alumni

+ Where did they come from / where did they go?

Note: Click on names for a description of research projects / list of papers

PhD Students

  • Giacomo Morgante (started 2024). Giacomo obtained his honours degree from Monash, and continued on to do PhD studies. His research work focuses on QED radiation in decays of B hadrons.
  • Javira Altmann (started 2022). Javira obtained her honours degree from Monash, and continued on to do PhD studies. Her research work focuses on aspects of string fragmentation and antenna showers in high-energy collisions.
  • Dr Christian Preuss (completed 2021/22 → post doc at ETH, Zurich). Christian came to Monash with an MSc in physics from Göttingen University. The title of his PhD thesis was "Improving the Efficiency and Accuracy in Monte-Carlo Event Generation".
  • Dr Cody Duncan (completed 2020 → post doc at KIT, Germany). Cody came to Monash with an Hons degree in physics from Oxford University, and an MSc in physics from Edinburgh University. His PhD projects focused on models of non-perturbative physics in the Herwig and Pythia event generators.
  • Dr Nadine Fischer (completed 2017 → employed at Arm). Nadine came to Monash with an MSc in physics from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The title of her PhD thesis was "Improved QCD Calculations and Phenomenological Studies at the Large Hadron Collider".

Honours Students

  • Jade Abidi (2025): "String phenomenology beyond the Lund limit".
  • Claire Bergman (2025): "String closepacking: from a puggle to an echidna".
  • Giacomo Morgante (2023): QED Antenna Showers in Hadron Decays.
  • Wilton Deany (2022/23): Antenna Showers with Jet Recoils.
  • Michael Deimetry (2022): "Automated Uncertainty Variations in the Antenna Formalism of Parton Showers."
  • Thomas Garnett (2022): "Improvements to the treatment of gluons within QCD-CR Junctions."
  • Javira Altmann (2021): "Close Packing of Lund Strings and its Effects on Strangeness Enhancement". Continued with PhD studies at Monash University.
  • Shay Payne (2020): "A Comparative Study of Coherence Effects in Weak Boson Fusion processes". Honours work subsequently incorporated into a publication in SciPost. Continued with Masters studies at RMIT, Melbourne.
  • Samuele Ferrucci (2020): "Thermal Quark-Antiquark Pair Production". Continued with Masters studies at Uppsala University.
  • Nicholas Hunt-Smith (2019): "String Fragmentation with a Time-Dependent Tension". Honours work subsequently incorporated into a publication in EPJC. Continued with PhD studies at University of Adelaide.
  • Ivan Begic (2019): "A Coherent Treatment of QCD Radiation from Supersymmetric Quarks in the Antenna Shower Formalism". Accepted for MSc studies at University of Bern, Switzerland.
  • Shi Qiu (2016; jointly supervised with Prof C. Balazs): "Uncertainties of the photon flux from dark matter annihilation". Continued with MSc studies at Lund University, Sweden.
  • Andrew Lifson (2015): "Maximally Helicity Violating amplitudes". Honours work subsequently incorporated into a publication in EPJC. Continued with MSc studies at ETH Zurich / Paris, then PhD Studies at Lund University, Sweden.

PHS3350 Research Projects

  • Caitlyn Smith (2024/25): "An Improved Model of SU(3) Colour Reconnections".
  • Claire Bergman (2024): "Heavy-Flavour Baryons at the Large Hadron Collider".
  • Wilton Deany (2022): "Optimizations of Monte Carlo Veto Algorithms for Antenna Showers".
  • Benjamin Sagar (2021): "Run-time studies of the hadronisation of b quarks".
  • Megha Sharma (2020): "Exploring the Propagator Structure of Parton Showers".
  • Sean Solari (2020): "Crossing Relations for Double-Gluon Emission Antenna Functions".
  • Zara Osborn (2019): "Fourier Analysis of Radiation from Short-Lived Heavy Particles" - investigations of the relation between the exponential decay of short-lived particles (resonances), their Breit-Wigner distribution in momentum space, and the effects of finite lifetimes on soft (long-wavelength) radiation, focusing on the top quark. Co-supervised by Dr. H. Brooks.
  • Sophie Li (2018): "Reparametrisation of the Lund symmetric fragmentation function" - a set of highly correlated parameters used in conventional string-based models of hadronisation are transformed to a set of less correlated ones, using numerical methods.
  • Matt Gebert (2016): "Something Strange? A glance into Parton Fragmentation" - a review of the Lund String Model of hadronisation and the Schwinger Model in QCD in light of recent ALICE measurements of strange particle enhancements in high-multiplicity pp collisions at the LHC.
  • Scott Crawshaw (2016): "Detector resolution effects in jet fragmentation studies" - estimating the influence of (improved) detector resolutions on measurements of QCD jet rates at two proposed future ee colliders.
  • Eike Germann (2016): "Possible uncertainty ranges for the underlying event in particle collisions at 100 TeV"

Other Student Research Projects

  • Zara Rosenberg (Monash PHS2350 project, 2024/25): "Efficient phase-space generation for scattering problems".
  • Ethan Carragher (PhD student at Oxford, UK; collaborative project 2024): "String Excitations on an Expanding String".
  • Lorenzo Bernardinis (Masters student at Trieste, Italy; collaborative project 2024 including a 2-week secondment to Oxford): "Strangeness in Pythia".
  • Baris Tuncay (PhD student at Oxford, UK; collaborative project 2023-2024 for ATLAS qualification task): "Precision Drell-Yan tunes with Pythia and Vincia".
  • Rob Verheyen (PhD student at Nijmegen, NL; collaborative project 2018/19 including two secondments to Monash): "QED and Electroweak Showers in the Vincia Antenna Formalism".
  • Adil Jueid (PhD student at Tanger, Morocco; collaborative project 2016-2018): "Estimating QCD uncertainties in Monte Carlo event generators for gamma-ray dark matter searches".
  • Leonardo Cristella (PhD student at Bari, Italy; MCnet studentship at CERN; 2016; jointly supervised by P. Richardson and L. Field): "Volunteer Computing with LHC@home" - including Test4Theory jobs in HTCondor and running intensive workloads with CMS@home.
  • Emma Kuwertz (PhD student at KTH Stockholm, Sweden; MCnet studentship at CERN; 2014): "Developing a set of jet substructure observables to probe beyond-LL aspects of QCD showers".
  • Jesper Christiansen (PhD student at Lund, Sweden; MCnet studentship at CERN; 2014): "String Formation Beyond Leading Colour".
  • Andrew Larkoski (PhD student at Stanford, USA; collaborative project 2012, including secondment to CERN): "Helicity-Dependent Showers and Matching with VINCIA"
  • Lisa Hartgring (PhD student at Amsterdam, NL; collaborative project 2012 including secondment to CERN): "Antenna Showers with One-Loop Matrix Elements".
  • Sara Alderweireldt (PhD student at Antwerpen, Belgium; CERN-LPCC Short-Term Student, 2012), project on multi-parton interactions at LHC.
  • Barbara Bravi (CERN summer student, 2011), project on event-generator tuning to LEP data.
  • Nishita Desai (PhD student at HRI Allahabad, India; MCnet studentship at CERN; 2010): "Supersymmetry and Generic BSM Models in PYTHIA 8".
  • Holger Schulz (PhD student at Berlin, Germany; MCnet studentship at CERN; 2010): "Energy Scaling of Minimum-Bias Tunes".
  • Kenneth Wraight (PhD student at Glasgow, UK; MCnet studentship at CERN; 2010): "Forward-Backward Correlations and Event Shapes as probes of Minimum-Bias Event Properties".