Rate My Professor Norbert Neumeister

Norbert Neumeister is Professor of Physics and Astronomy in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Purdue University, advancing through the ranks from Assistant Professor (2005–2010) and Associate Professor (2010–2014) to full Professor (2014–present). He received his M.S. in Physics (summa cum laude) in 1992 and Ph.D. in Physics (summa cum laude) in 1996 from the University of Technology Vienna. Earlier in his career, he served as Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute for High Energy Physics Vienna (1996–1999), Research Fellow at CERN (1999–2001), and Scientific Associate at CERN and Scientific Staff at the Institute for High Energy Physics Vienna (2002–2004). Neumeister's research centers on experimental particle physics within the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) since 1993. As Principal Investigator of the US CMS Tier-2 analysis center at Purdue since 2005, he leads efforts in event selection, reconstruction, computing, software development, and data analysis. His primary interests encompass electro-weak symmetry breaking, Higgs boson properties including H → μμ decays, searches for physics beyond the Standard Model via multi-lepton final states, electroweak precision measurements, and proton structure investigations.

Neumeister has earned prestigious awards such as the Department of Energy Outstanding Junior Investigator Award in High Energy Physics (2006), Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Education (2008), multiple Seed for Success Awards (2006–2019), co-recipient of the European Physical Society Particle Physics Prize (2013) for the CMS Higgs boson discovery, LHC Physics Center Distinguished Researcher (2017–2018), and co-recipient of the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. His key publications include 'The CMS experiment at the CERN LHC' (JINST, 2008), 'Reconstruction of cosmic and beam-halo muons with the CMS detector' (European Physical Journal C, 2008), and numerous CMS papers on muon performance, Z boson cross sections, supersymmetry searches, and Higgs measurements. With over 1,100 publications cited more than 60,000 times, Neumeister has significantly impacted high-energy physics through leadership in CMS muon reconstruction groups, Purdue's CMS representation, and editorial roles for International Journal of Modern Physics A and Modern Physics Letters A. He contributes extensively to departmental, college, and university committees, graduate admissions, and computing initiatives.