Dr. Whitbeck's research interests are in the field of experimental particle physics.  He is a member of the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) where he has been exploring the physics that governs the highest energy particle collisions humans have ever created. He has researched new ways to search for the Higgs bosons and measuring its properties, developed high-speed readout electronics for particle detectors, and searched for new fundamental forces and building block of matter which might be produced in high energy particle collisions.  Most recently Dr. Whitbeck has been studying various mechanisms for producing dark matter at accelerators such as the LHC, with the hope of better understanding the properties of dark matter and its influence on observations of the present-day universe.  While at Texas Tech, Dr. Whitbeck will continue to develop new detectors and novel techniques for exploring dark matter production in high energy particle collisions.

Dr. Whitbeck received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University where he played a central role in the discovery of the Higgs boson and performed some of the first characterization measurements which confirmed its expected properties.  He was a postdoctoral researcher at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory before coming to Texas Tech.