Freya Blekman

Freya Blekman is a Dutch professor at the University of Hamburg and the lead scientist at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY). While originally studying biology, Blekman ran into her physics teacher in the streets which convinced her to switch to studying physics. Following this undergraduate degree in physics, she received a Masters of Science at the University of Amsterdam in 2000 on R&D for the LHCb experiment at CERN. In 2005, she received her PhD at the University of Amsterdam, although most of the research was based at the D0 experiment at Fermilab in the United States. Her thesis addressed the measurement of top quark pair production in the all-hadronic channel using the D0 experiment. Blekman and her team at CERN discovered the new standard model of the Higgs-Boson, earning them the Science Magazine Breakthrough of the Year Award in 2012. In addition to full-time professorship, Blekman is also a visiting professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the University of Oxford.

Chatrchyan, S., et al. (2012). Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC. Physics Letters. Part B, 716(1), 30–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2012.08.021 The CMS Collaboration. (2008). The CMS experiment at the CERN LHC. Journal of Instrumentation: An IOP and SISSA Journal, 3(08), S08004–S08004. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-0221/3/08/s08004

Individually produced papers:

Blekman, F. (2005). Top Quark Pair Production in Proton Anti-Proton Collisions. OSTI.GOV. https://doi.org/10.2172/15017276 Blekman, F. (2012). Search for same-sign top production at the LHC. Societa Italiana di Fisica. 173–176. https://doi.org/10.1393/ncc/i2012-11241-6 Blekman, F. (2013). Measurement of the top pair invariant mass distribution and search for New Physics (CMS). Proceedings of Science. https://doi.org/10.22323/1.174.0212 Blekman, F. (2007). Studies for Semileptonic B Decays from B0. Proceedings of Science. https://doi.org/10.22323/1.021.0208 Blekman, F. (2007). Measurement of inclusive differential cross sections for Upsilon(1S) production in ppbar collisions at \sqrt s=1.96 TeV. Proceedings of Science. https://doi.org/10.22323/1.021.0234

Honors and awards

2011 – Odysseus II Grant by the Flemish funding agency FWO 2013 – USA Department of Energy LHC Physics Center Fellow 2016 – Jaarprijs Science Communication award of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for the Arts and Sciences (KVAB) for promotion of particle physics on social media 2019 – European Physics Society High Energy and Particle Physics (HEPP) prize for physics of the Top quark (for D0 collaboration) 2019 – 2021 – USA Department of Energy LHC Physics Center Senior Distinguished Researcher 2016 – 2019 – Member and co-chairperson of the CMS publication committee on Supersymmetry This promotion of particle physics on social media won her the Jaarprijs Science Communication award of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for the Arts and Sciences (KVAB) in 2016.