Rate My Professor Philip Burrows

Professor Philip Burrows is Professor of Accelerator Physics in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, a position he has held since 2006. He serves as Director of the John Adams Institute for Accelerator Science and as Senior Research Fellow in Physics at Jesus College, Oxford, where he also acts as Steward of the Senior Common Room. His academic journey began at Oriel College, Oxford, where he earned a BA in Physics from 1982 to 1985 and a DPhil in Particle Physics from 1985 to 1988. Following his doctorate, Burrows spent nearly a decade from 1989 to 1998 as Principal Research Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. He returned to the UK in 1998 as a Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council Advanced Fellow at Oxford until 2002, then joined Queen Mary University of London as Professor of Physics until 2005.

Burrows is an experimental high-energy particle physicist whose early career focused on probing the strong nuclear force and testing quantum chromodynamics. For the past two decades, his research has centered on the design, engineering, and technology for advanced particle accelerators and beamlines, with particular emphasis on beam delivery systems for high-energy subatomic particle colliders, advanced beam instrumentation, and ultra-fast feedback and feed-forward systems for controlling relativistic particle beam trajectories at nanosecond timescales. He has conducted experiments at leading facilities including CERN, DESY, SLAC, and KEK. Burrows holds prominent leadership roles, including Spokesperson of the worldwide Compact Linear Collider Collaboration, UK delegate to the European Committee for Future Accelerators, and Chair of the Physics Review Committee at DESY. He has previously chaired the STFC Particle Physics Advisory Panel, the UK Institute of Physics Particle Accelerators and Beams Group, and CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Committee. Recent appointments include Chair of the CERN Scientific Policy Committee in 2026, Chair of the High Luminosity LHC Collaboration Board in 2022, and Member of the Institute of Physics Council since 2021. Among his honors are Fellowships of the Institute of Physics since 2004 and the American Physical Society since 2009, as well as the MPLS award for outstanding research supervision in 2025. His contributions include key roles in the International Linear Collider Technical Design Report (2013), CLIC readiness reports, and the Future Circular Collider Feasibility Study Report.