EPFL awards Fabiola Gianotti honorary doctorate
Fabiola Gianotti © CERN (credit: Claudia Marcelloni)
Fabiola Gianotti, one of the leaders of the Higgs boson discovery at CERN, has been awarded an honorary doctorate by EPFL.
During its annual graduation ceremony on October 5th, EPFL awarded particle physicist Fabiola Gianotti an honorary doctorate as recognition for her contribution to the discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN.
Dr Gianotti received her PhD in experimental sub-nuclear physics from the University of Milan, and joined CERN in 1987. From 1999-2003, she served as spokesperson and co-ordinator of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), an enormous collaborative project involving about 3000 physicists (including 1000 students) from 177 institutes across 38 countries. In her role at ATLAS, Dr Gianotti led the project’s strategic planning, and became its public face to the international media, regularly communicating its findings to the world.
In July 2012, Dr Gianotti made scientific history when she announced that her team had finally found evidence pointing to the existence of the “God particle” Higgs boson – an achievement that made her a finalist in Time's Person of the Year 2012.
The honorary doctorate celebrates Dr Gianotti’s tremendous contribution to particle physics and also represents EPFL’s long-standing and ongoing collaboration with CERN and the LHC.