News Story

OU Physics Graduate at CERN Conference

Tuesday 28 Oct 2025

Scientists from all over the world got together this summer at POSMOL 2025, an International Workshop on Low-Energy Positron, Positronium Physics, Electron-Molecule Collisions and Swarms.

Dr. April Cridland Mathad, a research scientist at CERN, gave a talk about producing antihydrogen, the antimatter counterpart of hydrogen. Hydrogen is made of an electron and a proton, and antihydogen of an antiproton and a positron. April (standing on the right in the picture) studied Physics at the OU and a Masters degree and a PhD at Sussex University. At CERN, she is part of the ALPHA collaboration, working with antihydrogen to test fundamental symmetries between matter and antimatter. You can learn a bit more about April here: https://imascientist.org.uk/profile/aprilcridland/

April was not the only former OU student giving a talk at the meeting: Dr Daniel Bou-Debes (standing on the left in the picture), a former PhD student in the School of Physical Sciences and now a post-doctoral researcher in the School of Life, Health and Chemical Sciences, also gave a talk. He described improvements to the Electron Momentum Spectroscopy experiment in Dr. Kate Nixon’s lab.