User:Kellisteineman/sandbox

Freya Blekman is a professor at the University of Hamburg and the lead scientist at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY). She specializes in the physics and experimental aspects of elementary particles and fields, specifically looking at the top quark sector by using precision measurements.

Early Life and Education
Blekman was born in the Netherlands. As an undergraduate, she was part of the University of Amsterdam Science Fair team that presented their experiments during the CERN 40th anniversary event in 1994. While originally studying biology, Blekman ran into her physics teacher in the streets which convinced her to swtich to studying physics. Following this undergraduate degree in physics, she received a Masters of Science at the University of Amsterdam in 2000 for research and development in the LHCb experiement. In 2005, she received her Ph.D at the University of Amsterdam. Despite receiving her Ph.D here, most of her research during the time 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.

Career and Research
After receiving her Ph.D, Blekman held post doctorate positions at Imperial College London from 2005-2007 and Cornell University from 2007-2010. As the only woman amongst 100 people at Imperial College London, Blekman focused on CMS software and triggers, particle flow, and tau identification. At Cornell she researched pixel detector commissioning and measuring of the top quark pair production cross section in the first LHC data.

Following her postdoc, Blekman was an assistant professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel from 2010 to 2014 before becoming an associate professor until 2018. She then became a full professor of Vrije from 2019 to 2021, where she researched physics beyond the standard model in the top sector. During her academic career, Blekman was a member of many notable societies, including the German Physics Society, Institute of Physics (UK), and Belgian and Dutch physics societies. She also held membership and was a chairperson of physics and interdisciplinary peer review panels in the Netherlands, Sweden, Portugal, Portland, and Norway,

During her career, Blekman made considerable contributions within the team that worked to answer questions about dark matter, gravitational waves, quantum theories, and most notable the physics of the Higgs-Boson. 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.

Blekman has led multiple large physics groups throughout her life. The most prominent international research team lead was her creation of the physics outreach activities of the CMS Collaboration, where she currently still holds the role as the first Physics Communication Officer. Within this role, Blekman is responsible for outreach and communication of 4000+ international scientists at CERN that publish 130+ scientific papers per year. She also holds the role as the convener of the "Beyond-Two-Generations" (B2G) physics group, which has over 250 members worldwide and has published over 60 journals. The group works to analyze new particles using heavy quarks and W/Z/H bosons.

Ongoing from 2020, Blekman is a visiting professor at the University of Oxford. Blekman is also a lead scientist at Deutsches Elektronen-Syncrhotron (DESY) with joint appointment with the Unversity of Hamburg via the Helmholtz Distinguished Professor Recruitment Initiative since 2021. Blekman's future work includes searching for signs of new physics by utilizing the Large Hadron Collider at CERN as well as other future colliders. Her future collaborations include Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and FCC-ee at CERN.

Publications
Blekman has a Hirsh index of 210 with over 1500 published works. Majority of her published work is within CMS or D0 collaboration. However, when factoring in the papers to which she made a considerable contribution (76 papers), the H-index would be around 45. Her works currently have 62,439 citations. The most cited are:


 * 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
 * 2012 – Science Magazine/Breakthrough of the Year 2012 Award (for discovery of Higgs Boson)
 * 2013 – USA Department of Energy LHC Physics Center Fellow
 * 2013 – European Physics Society HEPP prize for discovery of Higgs-boson (for CMS collaboration)
 * 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 HEPP prize for physics of the Top quark (for D0 collaboration)
 * 2019 - 2021 – USA Department of Energy LHC Physics Center Senior Distinguished Researcher
 * 2021 – Helmholtz Distinguished Professorship

Memberships

 * 1999 – Member of CERN student program
 * 1999 – Chairperson of ATLAS-Canada Standing Review Committee, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and Canada IPPP Durham Advisory Board
 * 2016 - 2017 – Member and co-chairperson of the CMS publication committee on Supersymmetry
 * 2014 - 2018 – President of the PR and Outreach Council, VUB Faculty of Science and Bioengineering
 * 2014 - 2018 – Secretary of Examination/Admissions Council, VUB Master of Physics and Astrophysics
 * 2014 - 2018 – Secretary of Examination Council, VUB Bachelor of Physics and Astrophysics
 * 2015 - 2018 – Vice-chairperson of the VUB department of Physics + Astronomy
 * 2015 - 2018 – Member of executive committee VUB faculty of Science and Bioengineering
 * 2016 - 2018 – Co-convener of the Top physics group for the future electron-positron collider FCC-ee study
 * ? - 2018 – Director of undergraduate studies VUB Ba & Ma Physics and Astronomy
 * ? - 2018 – CMS Physics Communication Officer
 * 2017 - 2019 – Member and co-chairperson of CMS publications committee on Supersymmetry (held previously 2016-2017)
 * 2017 - present – Member of AcademiaNet of excellent female research leaders
 * 2018 - present – First ever CMS Physics Communication Officer
 * 2021 - present – Lead Scientist at DESY

Personal Life
Blekman grew up with a relatively arts and social-sciences focused family. Her grandmother was more math-oriented, but was forced to quit studying after high school to support her brother. This event pushed Blekmen to go to university herself and pursue the sciences.

Both of her parents passed away in 1994 and 1996, leading to a 2 year break during her studies.

Blekman speaks Dutch, English, French, and German.

Social Media Coverage
Blekman is very active on X under the username @freyablekman, where she shares advancements in her work on particle physics. She was also featured at CERN in a YouTube series about the hadron collider restart in 2015. 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.