Nicole Bell (scientist)

Last updated

Nicole F. Bell
Born1975 (age 4748)
Alma mater University of Melbourne
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of Melbourne
California Institute of Technology
Fermilab
Thesis Neutrino oscillations and the early universe  (2000)
Website https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/nicole-bell/

Nicole F. Bell (born 1975) is an Australian physicist who is a professor at the University of Melbourne. She is a theoretical physicist who works on dark matter, neutrino physics, and other topics in particle and astroparticle theory [1]

Contents

Bell is President of the Australian Institute of Physics. She was awarded the 2020 Australian Academy of Science Nancy Millis Medal for her work on dark matter and particle theory.

Education and career

Bell is from Australia. She earned her doctorate at the University of Melbourne with thesis research on neutrino oscillations and the early universe. [2] After earning her doctorate, Bell moved to the United States and joined the Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics as a research fellow. After three years at Fermilab, Bell was awarded a Sherman Fairchild Prize Fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. [3]

Bell returned to the University of Melbourne in 2007. [4] In 2011, she became a Chief Investigator of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Particle Physics at the Terascale, and in 2020, the Theory Program leader of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics. [3]

In 2021 Bell was elected Vice President of the Australian Institute of Physics. [4] Bell became President of the Australian Institute of Physics in 2023. [5]

Awards and honours

Scientific publications

Personal life

Bell has three children.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neutrino</span> Elementary particle with extremely low mass

A neutrino is a fermion that interacts only via the weak interaction and gravity. The neutrino is so named because it is electrically neutral and because its rest mass is so small (-ino) that it was long thought to be zero. The rest mass of the neutrino is much smaller than that of the other known elementary particles excluding massless particles. The weak force has a very short range, the gravitational interaction is extremely weak due to the very small mass of the neutrino, and neutrinos do not participate in the strong interaction. Thus, neutrinos typically pass through normal matter unimpeded and undetected.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fermilab</span> High-energy particle physics laboratory in Illinois, USA

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics. Since 2007, Fermilab has been operated by the Fermi Research Alliance (FRA), a joint venture of the University of Chicago, and the Universities Research Association (URA); although in 2023, the Department of Energy (DOE) opened bidding for a new contractor due to concerns about the FRA performance. Fermilab is a part of the Illinois Technology and Research Corridor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Masatoshi Koshiba</span> Japanese physicist (1926–2020)

Masatoshi Koshiba was a Japanese physicist and one of the founders of neutrino astronomy. His work with the neutrino detectors Kamiokande and Super-Kamiokande was instrumental in detecting solar neutrinos, providing experimental evidence for the solar neutrino problem.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael S. Turner</span> American theoretical cosmologist

Michael S. Turner is an American theoretical cosmologist who coined the term dark energy in 1998. He is the Rauner Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Chicago, having previously served as the Bruce V. & Diana M. Rauner Distinguished Service Professor, and as the assistant director for Mathematical and Physical Sciences for the US National Science Foundation.

Sterile neutrinos are hypothetical particles that are believed to interact only via gravity and not via any of the other fundamental interactions of the Standard Model. The term sterile neutrino is used to distinguish them from the known, ordinary active neutrinos in the Standard Model, which carry an isospin charge of ±+1/ 2  and engage in the weak interaction. The term typically refers to neutrinos with right-handed chirality, which may be inserted into the Standard Model. Particles that possess the quantum numbers of sterile neutrinos and masses great enough such that they do not interfere with the current theory of Big Bang nucleosynthesis are often called neutral heavy leptons (NHLs) or heavy neutral leptons (HNLs).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NOvA</span> Observatory

The NOνA experiment is a particle physics experiment designed to detect neutrinos in Fermilab's NuMI beam. Intended to be the successor to MINOS, NOνA consists of two detectors, one at Fermilab, and one in northern Minnesota. Neutrinos from NuMI pass through 810 km of Earth to reach the far detector. NOνA's main goal is to observe the oscillation of muon neutrinos to electron neutrinos. The primary physics goals of NOvA are:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nigel Lockyer</span> Particle physicist, Fermilab director

Nigel Stuart Lockyer is a British-American experimental particle physicist. He was the Director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), in Batavia, Illinois, the leading particle physics laboratory in the United States, from September 2013 to April 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marcela Carena</span> Argentine theoretical physicist

Marcela Silvia Carena Lopez is a theoretical physicist, and Distinguished Scientist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, where she is also head of the lab's Theory Division. She is also a professor at the University of Chicago, where she is a member of the Enrico Fermi Institute and the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur B. McDonald</span> Canadian astrophysicist

Arthur Bruce McDonald, P.Eng is a Canadian astrophysicist. McDonald is the director of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Collaboration and held the Gordon and Patricia Gray Chair in Particle Astrophysics at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario from 2006 to 2013. He was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Japanese physicist Takaaki Kajita.

Manfred Lindner is a German physicist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. He conducts basic research in particle and astro-particle physics.

The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a neutrino experiment under construction, with a near detector at Fermilab and a far detector at the Sanford Underground Research Facility that will observe neutrinos produced at Fermilab. An intense beam of trillions of neutrinos from the production facility at Fermilab will be sent over a distance of 1,300 kilometers (810 mi) with the goal of understanding the role of neutrinos in the universe. More than 1,000 collaborators work on the project. The experiment is designed for a 20-year period of data collection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel</span> Scientific advisory panel for particle physics in the US

The Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5) is a scientific advisory panel tasked with recommending plans for U.S. investment in particle physics research over the next ten years, on the basis of various funding scenarios. The P5 is a temporary subcommittee of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP), which serves the Department of Energy's Office of Science and the National Science Foundation. In 2014 the panel was chaired by Steven Ritz of the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 2023, the panel will be chaired by Hitoshi Murayama of the University of California, Berkeley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce McKellar</span> Australian theoretical particle physicist

Professor Bruce Harold John McKellar is an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the Centre of Excellence for Particle Physics at the Terascale (CoEPP) in the School of Physics at The University of Melbourne. The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) elected him as its President-Designate in 2012. In November 2014 McKellar became President of IUPAP, the first-ever Australian to take on this role.

Karsten M. Heeger is a German–American physicist and Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics at Yale University, where he also serves as both chair of the Yale Department of Physics and director of Wright Laboratory. His work is primarily in the area of neutrino physics, focusing on the study of neutrino oscillations, neutrino mass, and dark matter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dan Hooper</span>

Daniel Wayne Hooper is an American cosmologist and particle physicist specializing in the areas of dark matter, cosmic rays, and neutrino astrophysics. He is a Senior Scientist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and a Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angela Olinto</span> Astroparticle physicist and professor

Angela Villela Olinto is an astroparticle physicist and the Albert A. Michelson Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago as well as the Dean of the Physical Sciences Division. Her current work is focused on understanding the origin of high-energy cosmic rays, gamma rays, and neutrinos.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jocelyn Monroe</span> American experimental particle physicist

Jocelyn Monroe is an American experimental particle physicist who is a professor at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research considers the development of novel detectors as part of the search for dark matter. In 2016 she was honoured with the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for her work on the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.

Joshua A. Frieman is a theoretical astrophysicist who lives and works in the United States. He is a senior scientist at Fermilab and a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago. Frieman is known for his work studying dark energy and cosmology, and he co-founded the Dark Energy Survey experiment. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.

Geralyn P. (Sam) Zeller is an American neutrino physicist at Fermilab. At Fermilab, she is a participant in the MiniBooNE experiment, co-spokesperson for the MicroBooNE experiment, and deputy head of the Neutrino Division.

Elizabeth Jane Buckley-Geer is a particle physicist and astrophysicist at Fermilab, where she studies gravitational lensing as a collaborator on the Dark Energy Survey and Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. She is also an associate of the University of Chicago Consortium for Advanced Science and Engineering.

References

  1. "Nicole Bell". STEM Women. Retrieved 24 April 2022.
  2. Bell, Nicole F (2000). Neutrino oscillations and the early universe (Thesis). OCLC   222921402.
  3. 1 2 "CV | Nicole Bell" . Retrieved 24 April 2022.
  4. 1 2 "New hands at the helm, galactic evolution, Science Meets Parliament, and old computers the size of wardrobes | Australian Institute of Physics" . Retrieved 24 April 2022.
  5. Durrani, Matin (17 March 2023). "Ask me anything: Nicole Bell – 'Collaboration is the norm: we achieve more when we work together'". Physics World. Retrieved 6 April 2023.
  6. "Bragg Gold Medal for Excellence in Physics" . Retrieved 24 April 2022.
  7. "ARC Future Fellows announced | CoEPP". www.coepp.org.au. Retrieved 24 April 2022.
  8. "APS Fellow Archive". APS. Retrieved 24 September 2020.
  9. "AIP Fellows".
  10. "2020 Nancy Millis Medal for Women in Science". Australian Academy of Science. Retrieved 24 April 2022.