On November 12th, 2021 in the course of the Laura Bassi Forum, an event held to commemorate Bologna's famous 18th century female physicist, EPS Vice-President Petra Rudolf presented the EPS Gero Thomas Medal 2021 to Luisa Cifarelli. The medal is awarded to her "for ground breaking research in particle physics and for her lifelong and very impactful commitment to European collaboration in physics and to EPS."

Luisa Cifarelli has been Full Professor of Experimental Physics in Italian Universities since 1991. She is presently based at the University of Bologna. In the last twenty years she has been strongly involved in the design, construction and running of the very large size time-of-flight detector of ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) at CERN LHC (Large Hadron Collider), which is primarily devoted to study proton-proton, nucleus-nucleus (Pb-Pb) and proton-nucleus collisions at extreme energies. She currently participates also in the EEE experiment to search for extended air showers with an unprecedented network of muon tracking telescopes installed in high schools across the whole Italian territory and in the DarkSide project to search for dark matter at LNGS. The results of her work are documented in more than 900 scientific papers she co-authored throughout her career so far.

10 years ago Prof. Cifarelli was elected the first female president of EPS and among the many important initiatives she started in that role the EPS Historic Sites programme, where the 65 places of great importance for physics have been distinguished so far, is probably the best known. She also placed great emphasis on promoting diversity, and drove the creation of the Emmy Noether Distinction for Women in Physics. Moreover, she enhanced the communications tool of EPS by redesigning the website, and personally editing the regular electronic newsletter e-EPS, forged new links with international partner societies, increased the EPS’s membership with emphasis on Associate Members, significantly expanded the Young Minds programme and commissioned the first quantitative analysis on the Importance of Physics to the Economies of Europe. Luisa Cifarelli has had also a crucial role in scientific editing, where she has acted not only as member of editorial boards of various journals but also as Chief-Editor of La Rivista del Nuovo Cimento and EPJ Plus and served on the Board of Directors of EPL. 

Luisa Cifarelli - image credit: L. Cifarelli