Professor Kostas Nikolopoulos and artist Ian Andrews
IAN ANDREWS
During a residency at the University of Birmingham working with award winning particle physicist Professor Kostas Nikolopoulos in 2017 Ian made transformational changes to his practice creating the project The sketchbook and the Collider which seeks to establish equivalents between the interaction of fundamental particles and the language of drawing.
He has since delivered 24 exhibition/events and 50 workshops, including a solo exhibition at the Forum Exposition Bonlieu, Annecy, France in October 2022, following which Ian was invited to talk at the International Particle Physics Outreach Group (IPPOG) 25th annual conference at CERN in Geneva.
He was honoured in 2023/24 by a generous grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation in the USA and was also awarded a John Feeney Charitable Trust Fellowship from the city of Birmingham.
In 2024 returned to the University of Birmingham as artist in residence with the Centre for Systems Modelling and Quantitative Biomedicine working with Professor Clare Anderson investigating the disruption of Circadian Rhythms and its effect on neuronal networks in the brain.
In 2025 he presented his research at DESY, the Institute for Experimental physics in Hamburg, Germany. Where he spoke to the Particle and Astro-Physics Detector Development Group from the Universitat Hamburg, the LHC ErUM-FSP office at DESY and with IPPOG and outreach representatives.
PROFESSOR KOSTAS NIKOLOPOULOS
An experimental particle physicist at the University of Birmingham, he was strongly involved in the Higgs boson discovery at CERN in 2012. He received the 2019 Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists in the UK for his leadership and personal contributions.
He aspires to further our understanding of mass generation for matter and is committed to inspiring a new generation of scientists and citizens through cross-disciplinary collaboration and outreach activities and in 2020 won the European Research Council Public Engagement with Research Award for the Exclusive Higgs project of which The Sketchbook and the Collider is a part.
He now divides his time between the University of Birmingham and leading the Particle and Astro-Physics Detector Development Group at Universitat Hamburg.
Finally meeting up at CERN together in 2022. Left Prof. Kostas Nikolopoulos and artist Ian Andrews on the right.
Studio discussions.
Discussing bubble chambers photographs projected onto the scanning tables.