The Global Goals
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. Craig's work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
About Craig
I am a lecturer in Theoretical Physics. My main research area is lattice QCD, where High Performance Computing is used to solve the equations of QCD (important for nuclear physics.) I also have research projects in data science and Quantum Computing. There is more information about my research here.
email craig.mcneile@plymouth.ac.uk
Supervised Research Degrees
Serving as external examiner:
I have been an external examiner for a PhD students at Trinity College Dublin, University of Cambridge, University of Swansea, and the University of Adelaide..
Research interests:
My I do research in three general areas:
- Solving lattice QCD using High Performance Computing
- Data science
- Quantum Computing
There is more information about my research on my personal web site. https://sites.google.com/site/mcneilephysics/ My research interests in nuclear/hadronic physics I am working on solving QCD (Quantum Chromodynamics) via numerical simulations of lattice QCD. QCD is a well defined theory, but it is extremely difficult to solve. One set of the fundamental building blocks of matter are called quarks. We would like to study the masses and decay properties of quarks to find evidence for some more profound theory of particle physics than we have now. Unfortunately the quarks interact with each other and other particles via QCD. To study quarks, we need to tame QCD. QCD contains both quarks and gluons. Quarks and gluons combine to form bound states called meson and baryons. In principle the gluons can produce novel bound states, such as glueballs or hybrid mesons. However, currently, there is no conclusive evidence for QCD bound states where the gluons play a dynamical role. Perhaps, this is because QCD is difficult to solve.
The goals of my research in this area are:
- The determination of the masses of light J^PC = 0++ and 2++ flavour singlet mesons, because glueball degrees of freedom may be hidden in these states (Recent papers, 2010 , 2006 , 2000 and a review) .
- One of my medium term goals is to determine the mass spectrum of exotic mesons in the charmonium system.
- Validation of lattice QCD techniques against basic light meson spectroscopy, such as the masses of the a0 and b1 mesons. To understand novel bound states, we must also understand standard hadrons.
- Application of techniques to deal with resonances using lattice QCD.
There are new experimental facilities such as the 12 GeV upgrade of the Jefferson lab, and the PANDA experiment at GSI, whose main goal is to search for the effects of non-perturbative gluons. These experiments will start taking data after 2015. The BES experiment in China is already taking data and plans to look for glueball degrees of freedom.
My research interests in Data Science
- Use of Natural Language Programming to improve churn prediction in machine learning models. See this paper.
- Geometric modelling of the eye. I am working on the data analysis and Machine Learning aspects of the project.
My research interests in Quantum Computing I am working on using quantum computers to solve problems in Optimization and the simulation of quantum field theories. See our recent paper on optimizing the layout of windfarms using a quantum computer.
Conferences organised:
I was on the local organizing committee for the international 2005 conference in Dublin. I was one of the three editors of the proceedings for lattice 2005 conference. I organised a two day international workshop at Glasgow in April 2008 with the title: "The nuclear physics challenge to lattice QCD" (http://nuclear.gla.ac.uk/nuclat/). In 2016 I was on the organising committee for the Extreme QCD conference held in Plymouth (http://xqcd2016.math-sciences.org/).
Other academic activities:
There is additional information about my computational interests on an external website.
Links:
https://sites.google.com/site/mcneilephysics/
Teaching
In 2025-2026 I am teaching
- Operational Research (taught to second year undergraduate students in Mathematics)
- COMP5000 Software development and databases (taught to MSc students)
- Quantum Computing (taught to third year undergraduate students in Mathematics)
- Linear Algebra (taught to first year undergraduate students in Mathematics)
- MSc project supervision in Data Science (7 students)
I am the program manager for the Data Science and Business Analytics MSc.
At the University of Liverpool I taught the following lecture courses:
- Special and General Relatively.
- Mathematical methods to first year science students.
At the University of Utah, I taught
- Computational physics to undergraduates.
