Adi Ashkenazi

Zuckerman Israeli Postdoctoral Scholar Alumna, Adi Ashkenazi, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has earned the Universities Research Association 2020 Tollestrup Award for her research into neutrinos, ghostly particles that can pass through solid matter at high speeds without slowing.

“The Tollestrup Award has a tradition of recognizing postdocs who are making creative and essential contributions to Fermilab experiments, and Ashkenazi faced fierce competition within this group,” said award committee chair Michael Mulhearn, an associate professor of physics at the University of California Davis. “Ashkenazi’s improvements to modeling neutrino interactions, born of a productive collaboration with our colleagues in nuclear physics, are of far-reaching consequence and will be essential to the success of next-generation neutrino experiments.”

Ashkenazi was cited “for substantial improvements to the modeling of neutrino interactions using electron scattering data and widespread contributions to data acquisition, background modeling and systematics on MicroBooNE,” a Fermilab neutrino experiment.