FREYA BLEKMAN
Lead Scientist at DESY, Professor at University of Hamburg
Welcome to the website of Freya Blekman, a professor in elementary particle physics at the University of Hamburg, working at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY. My research focuses on trying to answer questions like: how did the universe evolve experimentally? What are the smallest constituents of matter and are they really the smallest? What is the nature of space and time? What, really, is mass?
I am regularly covered in various media, and highly recommend my twitter feed aimed at the technically-inclined general public.
A quick link to my cv is here.
BIO
As an enthusiastic and devoted researcher, Freya sees no better purpose in life than passing on their love of learning to their own team, the wider scientific community, to university students, and on to the general public.
My research interests include the search for signs of new physics using the large hadron collider at CERN and future colliders. My focus is on the detection of new physics using precision measurements and direct searches, looking predominantly at the top quark sector. I work in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) and FCC-ee collaborations, where I am active in top quark physics and the search for new particles that decay to top quarks.
I have been responsible for leadership of many large international research teams at CERN and CMS, the most prominent probably the start of the physics outreach activities of the CMS Collaboration as the first Physics Communications Officer, and as the first convener of the Beyond-Two-Generations (B2G) physics group, a dedicated physics analysis group focusing on using heavy quarks and W/Z/H bosons to search for new particles.
PUBLISHED WORK (HIGHLIGHTS)
As I publish mostly within large collaborations, I focus in the list only on papers I have actually made a contribution to (and indicate the contribution in parentheses). Using a list containing all articles to which I have made a substantial and provable contribution. See also my CV linked from the top of this page.
Looking at my scientific impact, I have provable contributions to in the order of 7% of all journal papers in the CMS collaboration, with a focus on searches for new particles and rare standard model processes, all involving top quarks. Below is a selection of ten of my most relevant/representative publications. The citations were counted in INSPIRE as of 8 January 2023.
Likely more up-to-date:
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7366-7098
Full InspireHep record: https://inspirehep.net/authors/1021164