prof. dr. Gerhard Raven

Full Professor, Faculty of Science, (Astro)-Particles Physics

Personal information

Prof. dr. Gerhard Raven is a Full Professor of Experimental High Energy Physics at VU Amsterdam and a senior staff member at Nikhef. He completed his PhD at Utrecht University in the mid-1990s, having begun his research career at Nikhef. He subsequently spent time at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California, where he contributed to the BaBar experiment: a dedicated B-physics experiment studying CP violation. He then joined the LHCb experiment at CERN, becoming a long-standing member of the VU Amsterdam and Nikhef LHCb group, where he has held a professorship. Together with colleagues Mara Senghi Soares and Wouter Hulsbergen, he was awarded the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics as part of the LHCb collaboration.

Breakthrough Prize – Fundamental Physics Breakthrough Prize

Research

Prof. Raven's research focuses on experimental particle physics within the LHCb experiment at CERN, with a particular emphasis on data acquisition, triggering, and B-meson physics. He has been a key architect of LHCb's transition to a real-time, GPU-based trigger system; a radical departure from conventional approaches that enables the experiment to process and filter collision data at unprecedented rates while ensuring no signal is irreversibly discarded. His physics interests centre on CP violation and rare B-meson decays, contributing to precision tests of the Standard Model and the search for signs of new physics in the matter–antimatter asymmetry of the universe.

Ancillary activities