Leading expert in the physics of the Higgs Boson to do research at the Theoretical High Energy Physics group at Mainz University
01.12.2010
Supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the renowned theoretical physicist Marcela Carena comes to Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU) to continue her research together with her scientific host Professor Dr. Matthias Neubert of the Theoretical High Energy Physics (THEP) group at Mainz University.
Professor Carena, born in Buenos Aires in Argentina, completed her PhD at DESY - Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (German Electron Synchrotron) at the University of Hamburg in 1989. Carena is both a senior scientist at Fermilab - the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago, Illinois, and a professor in the Physics Department and the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago. Together with Professor Lisa Randall from Harvard University, Professor Carena counts as leading female physicist in theoretical high energy physics and electroweak symmetry breaking. Her scientific papers span an impressive range of topics and have been highly cited. She has worked particularly on possible extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics, on the explanation of matter/anti-matter asymmetry in the Universe, and on the origin of dark matter.
Professor Carena ranks among the worldwide leading experts in the physics of the Higgs Boson and in the field of supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model. An important topic in her work is the search for new particles at particle accelerators such as Tevatron at Fermilab near Chicago and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva. Besides supersymmetry, Professor Carena has done extensive research on models which include extra spatial dimensions in addition to the known three dimensions.
Thanks to the Humboldt Research Award about 70 top scientists from all over the world can be invited every year to continue their long-term research projects in Germany.