Fabiola Gianotti

Fabiola Gianotti
File:Portrait of Fabiola Gianotti.jpg
Born	(1960-10-29) October 29, 1960 Rome, Italy
Fields	Particle physics
Alma mater	University of Milan
Known for	ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider
Notable awards	Enrico Fermi Prize of the Italian Physical Society (2013) Special Fundamental Physics Prize (2012)

Fabiola Gianotti (Italian: [faˈbiːola dʒaˈnɔtti]; born October 29, 1960) is an Italian particle physicist and the Director-General of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Her mandate began on 1 January 2016 and runs for a period of five years. She is the first woman to hold the position of CERN Director-General.

Biography

Fabiola Gianotti received a Ph.D. in experimental particle physics from the University of Milan in 1989.

Since 1996, following several postdoctoral positions, including a fellowship at CERN, she has been a research physicist in the Physics Department of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and since August 2013 an honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh. She is also a member of the Italian Academy of Sciences (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei), foreign associate member of the US National Academy of Sciences and foreign associate of the French Academy of Science.

Gianotti has worked on several CERN experiments (WA70, UA2 experiment, ALEPH, ATLAS), being involved in detector R&D and construction, software development and data analysis.

From March 2009 to February 2013 she held the elected position of project leader (”Spokesperson”) of the ATLAS experiment. The ATLAS Collaboration consists of 3000 physicists from 40 countries. On 4 July 2012 she presented the ATLAS results on the search for the Higgs boson in an historic seminar at CERN. This event marked the announcement of the discovery of the Higgs boson by the ATLAS and CMS experiments.

Gianotti is the author or co-author of more than 500 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals. She has given more than 30 invited plenary talks at the major international conferences in the field. A list of her scientific publications is recorded in the database Inspire HEP.

She was/is a member of several international committees, such as the Scientific Council of the CNRS (France), the Physics Advisory Committee of the Fermilab Laboratory (USA), the Council of the European Physical Society, the Scientific Council of the DESY Laboratory (Germany), the Scientific Advisory Committee of NIKHEF (Netherlands). She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the UN Secretary-General, Mr Ban Ki-moon.

Gianotti was included among the “Top 100 most inspirational women” by The Guardian newspaper (UK, 2011), ranked 5th in Time magazine’s Personality of the Year (USA, 2012), included among the “Top 100 most influential women” by Forbes magazine (USA, 2013) and considered among the “Leading Global Thinkers of 2013” by Foreign Policy magazine (USA, 2013).

Religious views

In a 2010 interview, Gianotti said that she saw no contradiction between science and faith and they belong to "two different spheres". In an interview by la Repubblica, she said that "Science and religion are separate disciplines, though not antithetical. You can be a physicist and have faith or not."

Honours and awards

Honorary academic degrees

• She received honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Uppsala, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), McGill University (Montreal), Oslo University and University of Edinburgh.
• Since 2013 she is honorary professor at the University of Edinburgh.

Awards

• In December 2014 Gianotti was awarded the honour of “Cavaliere di Gran Croce dell’ordine al merito della Repubblica” by the Italian President Giorgio Napolitano.
• In September 2013 Gianotti was awarded The Enrico Fermi Prize of the Italian Physical Society (2013).
• In November 2013 Gianotti was awarded The Niels Bohr Institute Medal of Honour.
• In December 2012 Gianotti was awarded the Fundamental Physics Prize: Special Breakthrough Prize.
• In December 2012 Gianotti was awarded the Gold Medal (known as "Ambrogino d'oro", named after the patron saint of Milan, Saint Ambrose) by the Milan Municipality.

External links

• ATLAS - "The physics dream", Fabiola Gianotti, Oct 2008 (UMich Web Lecture Archive Project)