Birth: October 29, 1960
Specialty: Particle Physics
Major Contributions:
Project Leader of the ATLAS experiment at CERN
Authored and co-authored over 500 scientific papers
Director-General for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)
Image: ATLAS Experiment at CERN (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Pursuing both music and science for as long as she could, Dr. Fabiola Gianotti concluded that of the two only music could be cultivated as a hobby so eventually physics won out. But she didn’t give up on music completely – in fact she is a pianist with a diploma from the Milan Music Conservatory to go with her doctorate in physics.
While pursuing her doctorate Gianotti started working at the European Organization for Nuclear research, more commonly known as CERN, and has been at the forefront of experimental particle physics since that time.
Working with the UA2 experiment and the Large Positron Collider, she earned her doctorate from the University of Milan. At CERN she has worked with various research groups and experiments and has been involved with detector research and development and construction.
Starting in the 1990s, she worked as the physics coordinator for the ATLAS collaboration at CERN, which consisted of a group of almost 3,000 physicists. Elected project leader of the group in 2009, it was Gianotti’s job to lead the lab’s strategic planning for one of the two teams working independently searching for evidence of Higgs particles. In this role she had the great honor of making the formal announcement of the discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs based on the experimental data gathered by the ATLAS team using the Large Hadron Collider.
On January 1, 2016, Gianotti began a five-year term as the director-general of CERN, in Geneva Switzerland. As the first woman to hold this office she is responsible for overseeing all research at the facility including its top priority – a three-year run of the LHC before it was shut down for upgrading. These experiments are expected to return three times the data of the accelerator’s first run. But Gianotti stresses that CERN is not just the LHC and has other facilities and runs other experiments including the precise measurements of rare decays and detailed studies of antimatter to name a few. Reappointed to a second term, she will continue to lead the organization until 2025.
Written by Angela Goad
Sources:
CERN: Fabiola Gianotti Director-General
Fabiola Gianotti takes charge at CERN as lab weighs up designs for future colliders
Meet The Most Powerful Woman In Particle Physics
A Celebrated Physicist With a Passion for Music
See Also:
Forbes Profile: Fabiola Gianotti