Reda Tafirout

Reda Tafirout 

Senior Research Scientist / Department Head, Scientific Computing

TRIUMF, MOB 128

4004 Wesbrook Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 2A3
Canada
 
604-222-7579

tafirout@triumf.ca

Research Topics

Dr. Tafirout's field of research is particle physics, which has a primary objective of addressing the most compelling science questions of our time about what are the fundamental constituents of matter and the forces that govern our universe. By colliding particles at the highest energy achievable in the laboratory, one effectively recreates conditions just a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, thus subatomic particles may be created that have never been seen before.

Dr. Tafirout has made substantial contributions to several high profile international particle physics experiments with OPAL, SNO, CDF, and ATLAS in varying roles and capacities; including detector commissioning and operations, online/offline software and computing, as well as direct analysis and interpretation of the data with subsequent publications. The research programs have made precise measurements and breakthrough discoveries leading to two Nobel Prizes: one in 2013 for the Higgs boson discovery by the ATLAS and CMS experiments (awarded to theorists François Englert and Peter Higgs who predicted the fundamental particle in 1964); the other Nobel Prize was awarded in 2015 to Takaaki Kajita (from the Super-Kamiokande experiment) and Arthur. B. McDonald (from the SNO experiment) for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass. Dr. Tafirout is a Laureate of the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics awarded to the SNO collaboration.

Dr. Tafirout has extensive experience in scientific computing and since 2007 he is the Director of Operations of the Canadian ATLAS Tier-1 centre which is part of a globally distributed computing and storage network set up to store, process and analyze vast amount of data.

Publications