Dr. Adi Ashkenazi

Dr. Ashkenazi completed her graduate research at Tel Aviv University, as part of the ATLAS collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (outside Geneva). The standard model of particle physics describes the universe using a set of elementary particles and the interactions between them, but it is known to be incomplete, implying the existence of a new physics. Dr. Ashkenazi is interested in any evidence for such new physics.

Specifically, Dr. Ashkenazi is looking at neutrinos, the only particles with yet unknown properties and which cause inconsistency of the standard model by having a mass. This year, she will join the MicroBooNE experiment at Fermilab in Illinois in which her advisors at MIT serve as active collaborators. According to the Israeli national academy of sciences, not enough Israeli researchers are engaged in nuclear research, so Dr. Ashkenazi’s experiences as part of the international nuclear community (at the intersection between particle and nuclear physics) could potentially contribute to enhancing Israel’s role in this area.

She has won teaching prizes and, aside from her graduate teaching duties, has taught or guided in many diverse settings as the Bloomfield Science Museum, the Bonn Physics Show, and at gender education workshops.