Pekka K. Sinervo

Pekka K. Sinervo is an experimental particle physicist who has studied quarks, gluons and vector bosons   using high-energy electron and proton collisions. He is a professor of physics at University of Toronto, where he has taught and pursued research since 1990.

He is known for his contributions to the discovery of the top quark and studies of its properties (see, e.g.,  ), along with collaborators in the CDF (Collider Detector at Fermilab) and ATLAS experiments. He was also a member of one of the teams that discovered the Higgs boson. His earlier work involved the study of mesons with charm quarks and strange quarks, and hadrons with bottom quarks (see, e.g.,  ). He is currently working on searches for new particles (see, e.g., ) and dark matter at the SNOLAB Underground Laboratory, as a member of the SuperCDMS Collaboration. Sinervo served as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science at the University of Toronto from 2003 to 2008, and as senior vice-president, research at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research from 2009 to 2015. He has written on international research collaborations, science and Judaism, and popular science (see, e.g.,

). He is a member of the Reform Jewish Community of Canada, serving as its president from 2017 to 2021, and has served in leadership roles in the Union for Reform Judaism and the World Union for Progressive Judaism. He has been recognized for his contributions with appointments to numerous scientific societies with fellowships in the American Physical Sociey and the Royal Society of Canada recognizing his contributions to the discovery of the top quark.  He was appointed a member of the Order of Canada in 2018 for his contributions to the discoveries of the top quark and Higgs boson, and his leadership in the Canadian Jewish community.