Luisa Cifarelli

Luisa Cifarelli FInstP (born 11 June 1952) is a Professor of Experimental Particle Physics at the University of Bologna. She is the Director of the La Rivista del Nuovo Cimento.

Early life and education Cifarelli was born in Rome in 1952, daughter of Michele Cifarelli, an Italian politician and magistrate. She studied physics at the University of Bologna and graduated in 1975. She worked as a researcher in at the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare and CERN. She edited the collection of scientific studies for the publication QCD at 200 TeV. In 1988 she was made an associate professor at L'Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II.

Career Cifarelli was appointed full Professor at the University of Pisa in 1991. She moved to the University of Salerno in 1993. She works at CERN, the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, DESY and the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare. She has been involved in the design and construction of the ALICE experiment, which studies proton-proton and nucleus-nucleus collisions at extreme energies. She was made Head of the ALICE Data Analysis and Simulation Group in 2000. She served as Deputy Chairperson of the time of flight experiment at ALICE. She serves on the DarkSide project; a 20 tonne Two-Phase LAr TPC for Direct Dark Matter Detection at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso.

In 2008, Cifarelli was the first woman to be made President of the Italian Physical Society in 2008. That year she was also elected as a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. She was made President of the Enrico Fermi Center for Study and Research. She has spoken about the life of Enrico Fermi extensively.