Wendy Taylor (physicist)

Taylor graduated from the University of British Columbia with Bachelors of Science in Physics in 1991.^[1] As an undergraduate, she worked at TRIUMF, working on rare kaon decay.^[1] She completed her graduate studies at the University of Toronto, where she earned a PhD under the supervision of Pekka Sinervo in 1999.^[2][3] She worked on fragmentation properties of the bottom quark.^[4] She worked at Stony Brook University as a postdoctoral fellow.^[5][6] She worked on Fermilab's D0 experiment, building electronics to detect bottom quark particles in real time.^[1][7]

Taylor's research focuses on the magnetic monopole. To do this, she is using the ATLAS detector.^[8][9] Her lab concentrated on the development of firmware for the transition radiation tracker within the ATLAS experiment.^[10] She is motivated by predictions from Grand Unified Theory, the observation of quantised charge and potential to reinforce the symmetry in Maxwell's equations.^[11]

Taylor spent five years working at the Tevatron particle accelerator. She was concerned when it lost government funding in 2011.^[12] Whilst working at the Fermilab Tevatron particle accelerator, Taylor identified CP violation in the decay of bottom quarks, which could contribute to the dominance of matter in the universe.^[13] The rate at which she detected CP violation was two-orders of magnitude larger than that predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics.^[14][15]

She joined York University in 2004, where she was one of two women in the department.^[16] She held a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair between 2004 and 2014.^[16]

Taylor is a member of the American Physical Society and the Particle Physics Division of the Canadian Association of Physicists.^[17][18] In 2024, Taylor was named a Fellow of the Canadian Association of Physicists for "... her outstanding contributions to particle physics including leading collider searches for magnetic monopoles, B-meson oscillations, and CP violation; and for notable service to the physics community, engaging in physics outreach, and tirelessly promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion in physics".^[19][20]