Rate My Professor Phillip Urquijo

Professor Phillip Urquijo is Professor of Experimental Particle Physics in the School of Physics, Faculty of Science, at the University of Melbourne. He obtained his BSc (Hons) in 2003 and PhD in Science in 2007 from the University of Melbourne. As a PhD student, he joined the Belle experiment at KEK in Japan in 2004, initiating his work in high-energy particle physics. Post-PhD, Urquijo worked at CERN on the ATLAS experiment from 2007, contributing to searches for new physics including the Higgs boson discovery. He held a postdoctoral position at Syracuse University (2010-2011) and a junior professorship at the University of Bonn (2011-2013), where he taught master's courses and advanced his involvement in the SuperKEKB project.

Returning to the University of Melbourne in 2014 as an ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer, Urquijo progressed to Professor and served as Physics Coordinator for the Belle II experiment, becoming the youngest coordinator of a large-scale international particle physics experiment at age 31. His research focuses on experimental particle physics, leading Australian contributions to Belle II for precision flavour physics measurements and beyond-Standard-Model searches via B meson decays; Hyper-Kamiokande for neutrino CP violation, mass hierarchy, and proton decay, where he leads precalibration system development and sits on the Steering and Resources Board; and SABRE for dark matter direct detection using NaI crystals at Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory. He supervises a large group of PhD and MSc students on these projects. Urquijo received the 2015 Eureka Prize for Emerging Leader in Science and has co-authored numerous publications in top journals, presenting results at major conferences and influencing global particle physics efforts.