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Contact points :
The African Light Source, https://www.africanlightsource.org
The African Strategy for Physics and applied. Physics https://africanphysicsstrategy.org
Subjects: Particle Physics, Nuclear Physics, Nuclear Energy, Materials Science, Quantum Physics, High Performance Computing, Applied (innovation) Physics.
Bio: Prof Connell is Professor of Physics within the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment at the University of Johannesburg. He has research interests in Particle Physics, Nuclear Physics, Nuclear Energy, Materials Science, Quantum Physics, High Performance Computing and Applied (innovation) Physics. His rating by the SA Research Funding Agency (NRF) cites him as having “considerable international recognition”. He is a past president of the South African Institute of Physics. He is the founding member of the South African participation in High Energy Physics at the ATLAS Experiment at CERN, where with his group he participates in a Beyond Standard Model search as well as engineering and technical activities. He has published over 170 papers in International Journals and is also an ATLAS author with over 600 ATLAS papers. He has a Scopus H-index of 78 with over 27,000 citations. He has worked for many years at the European Synchrotron Research Facility (ESRF). He is interested in technology for competitive industry and in innovation and has a project on the intelligent sensor based sorting of diamond in kimberlite, which is now being commercialized. He is a passionate supporter of Nuclear Energy and performs research in this area, particularly the modelling of power reactors. A current activity in the service of the discipline is the development of the South African user base for Light Sources, (these are premier international multi-disciplinary research tools) and the implementation of the roadmap towards the African Light Source, where he chairs the Executive Committee. He is also on the team leading the development of the African Strategy for Physics.