Author: Kees van der Beek
Sara Bolognesi: Laureate of the Summer 2021 EPS Emmy Noether Distinction
Kees van der Beek, chair of the EPS Equal Opportunities Committee,
spoke to Sara Bolognesi of CEA-IRFU in Saclay, France, laureate of the
Summer 2021 EPS Emmy Noether Distinction on her work, her interactions
with other communities, research funding, reconciling work and family
life, and mentoring of young physicists.
Kees van der Beek (KvdB):
My very warmest congratulations with the Summer 2021 Emmy Noether
Distinction for your contributions to, and, indeed, leading role in the
CMS and T2K experiments! Can you explain what your current scientific
interests are, why your experiments are important, and what the stakes
are?
Sara Bolognesi (SB): My present scientific
interest is in neutrino oscillations. Neutrinos are very interesting
particles, but very difficult to study! This is because they are hard to
produce, and once you produced them, they are hard to detect, because
of their extremely weak interaction with matter. Therefore, very large
amounts of neutrinos must be produced for any given experiment, and huge
detectors are needed to obtain the necessary sensibility to pronounce
oneself on physical effects related to them. However, building such huge
instruments is well worth it, since neutrino physics is one of the most
promising avenues to push our understanding of fundamental physics
beyond our present interpretation, the Standard Model. The T2K (Tokai to
Kamioka) experiment seeks to quantify neutrino oscillations (evolution
of one neutrino type into another) through measurement of the so-called
mixing parameters. This can, given sufficient sensitivity, unveil the
symmetries in the neutrino mass ordering and flavour mixing, and most
importantly, a possible violation of charge-parity (CP). This would be a
crucial discovery, while CP-violation has been measured in quark
sector, this would be a new fundamental source of CP-violation and the
first in the lepton sector. We have, so far, made significant steps
towards a measurement of possible violation of CP symmetry in neutrino
physics, but experiments have to be made more sensitive – which is my
aim and that of my team. Remarkably, since the collisions of neutrinos
with the detector material involve their complex, many-body interaction
with the multiplicity of particles composing the target nuclei, reaching
the required accuracy requires an adequate comprehension of the nuclear
physics involved. This is true for both the accurate characterisation
of the emitted neutrino flux, as for the understanding of the scattering
cross-sections in the remote detector. What I love about my work is the
fact that it therefore involves many different communities – every day,
I learn something new!
KvdB: Is the search for
new physics the reason why you made a spectacular move from Higgs physics
in the framework of the CMS collaboration to neutrino physics, and
this, right after the discovery of the Higgs, when results were ready
for the reaping? How did you decide this shift?
SB:
Indeed, after the discovery of the Higgs, the entire team was extremely
excited. However, in spite of the Higgs having been discovered, there
are many questions to which the standard model cannot provide answers.
In particular, it cannot possibly be valid to arbitrary high-energy
scales, so there must be something beyond. An illuminating overview
presented by Hiroshi Murayama from Berkeley at a Higgs workshop in 2013
made it very clear to me that neutrinos are an extremely promising
window to such very high-energy scales. In particular, the standard
model cannot explain why neutrinos have mass, nor why they oscillate the
way they do. Both these phenomena determine the numerical values of a
great many parameters, so understanding them would be a particularly
important step into our further comprehension of nature, and, in
particular, the existence of as-yet hidden symmetries. Practically, I
was greatly helped by the job opportunity formulated by CEA-IRFU, that
did not only propose a permanent position, but did not require previous
experience in the field of neutrino physics – indeed, they were very
open to candidates form other fields. This allowed me to settle and
establish myself both as a scientist and in my personal life. As a
particle physicist, the learning curve in neutrino physics was steep,
but I feel I was truly helped both in my institute and by the welcoming
attitude of the neutrino community.
KvdB:What are the most satisfying – and more difficult parts of your work?
SB:
I love the interaction between many communities and between
experimentalists and theorists that characterizes neutrino physics. The
most difficult part of my position is securing the necessary financial
resources – we are not trained for that as physicists! Here again, I see
the need to go out and obtain funding as an opportunity to learn, even
if this part of the job takes up more and more of our time. We, as
physicists, should accept the manner the world we live in functions. We
must, before publicizing our work in physics and asking for funding,
stop and really ask ourselves whether what we project to do is truly
worth of funding. To have to reflect on this and then explain to
non-experts why society should fund physics is an important and
necessary part of our job. For me, frustration arises when decisions are
made based on political priorities rather than scientific arguments.
While we need a realistic compromise due to the boundary conditions
posed by the world we live in, our primary goal should always be driven
by physics arguments.
More fundamentally, there are better ways in
which a funding process could work. Notably, the very nature of
fundamental physics research requires, at the least, medium-term funding
based on a vision and multi-year strategy submitted by the team, lab,
institute, or collaboration submitting the request, and not the calls
for short-term, individualistic projects that we see all too often
today. At the same time, I’m very worried by the inertia that comes with
increasing size of the collaborations and cost of the experiments. This
not only slows their development but also makes it very difficult to
react and adapt the overall strategy to physics evidence when new
results are obtained.
I, obviously, do not hold the perfect recipe
but our compass should always point to the long-term objective of
advancing physics, no matter how difficult this could be from a
political or funding point of view.
KvdB: You are
obviously very passionate about physics, and that since a very young
age. Where did you get this passion, and how did you choose physics?
SB:
(laughs) You will be surprised to know that at the outset, I first
started on a literary, and not on a scientific path in my secondary
school studies! It was my professor of philosophy in secondary school
who suggested that we read simple texts on modern physics to open our
mind. These were simple texts that addressed issues such as
particle-wave duality, the nature of light, matter, and their
interactions, that had a very large impact on me. I realised that this
touched on something so fundamental for the understanding of our world
that I could not accept to ignore it: I wanted to learn more about it!
My subsequent enrolment in the physics programme at the university of
Torino has lead to two life-changing experiences. The first was my
participation in the CMS-Torino group as of my third year of studies, a
group with several women in leadership positions. All had a rich social
and family life, as well as being highly successful physicists, which
allowed me to project myself in my own possible future. The second was
my work at CERN, in a truly multicultural environment. This was, to me,
as much as a scientific experience, a truly human experience that made
me decide that this is what I wanted for the rest of my life. In the
neutrino community, which involves close collaboration between
physicists from Europe, Japan, and the Americas, I find this
multicultural, tolerant, and very human ambiance once again.
KvdB: Did you ever have problems reconciling your work and your family?
SB:
There have been some difficult moments, but, honestly, I am working in
an environment and for an employer that is extremely respectful of the
balance between work and one’s private life, to the point where the
balance we can achieve here is envied by our foreign collaborators. For
instance, when my partner and I adopted our children, my professional
environment was extremely respectful of our choice and very helpful when
I returned to the laboratory. I cannot help but think that this is
related to the fact that the head of my laboratory, the head of the IRFU
Institute, and the head of our CEA Direction are all women. A difficult
moment was the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and the first lockdown -
even if I realise that the situation was much harder for so many
others. Where I had, over two years, established a good work-family life
balance, this was now, all of a sudden, overturned. Here I was working
from home, with three children by my side, and required to school them!
The real problem here is not, in my opinion, one of gender, but that of
attaining equilibrium between family life and professional life in
general, whatever the family’s composition. I am very fortunate in that
my husband fully participates in family tasks, including during the
COVID-19 period; having a family that supports me in my professional
challenges is very important for me.
KvdB: You have had many role models in Torino. Do you consider yourself to be a role model now?
SB:
I hope I am! All the more so since, in my group today, there are nearly
as many women as men. We do discuss gender issues as well as family
issues, especially with younger women. I tell them that their life
choice is, of course, theirs. However, they should never make this
choice based on fear. Being afraid that one cannot be a woman and a
physicist at the same time, of “not being able to”, must never be a
criterion for choosing work over one’s private life or vice versa.
Taking responsibility for one’s choice however comes with effort, the
effort to make it work, and the effort to find one’s correct personal
balance. The message I wish to convey is: if you want a career in
physics, go for it, if you love physics, you will manage!
Kees van der Beek (KvdB):
You are in a position of ever increasing responsibilities. Do you have
ideas on how an academic, scientific environment can help empower women
active in its midst?
Sara Bolognesi (SB): That’s a
tough question! There are no easy solutions to this. Nevertheless, I
think two things can help. The first, and most effective in my opinion,
is tutoring, through examples. When one meets a young woman in doubt
about her career choice, having a role model with whom she can interact
or a tutor that serves as an example and build her self-confidence can
really help. At T2K we also have a Diversity group that reaches out to
young women in this sense. The second, and more general point is that we
all, women and men, should make an effort to make our professional
environment less aggressive. Even though academic discussion can be
passionate, we should always be careful to respect the other, and not
try to, for example, undermine the other’s self-confidence. Speak out,
discuss, argue, with passion and conviction, but do so as if you were
speaking to a close family member, your daughter or son, with respect
and understanding. Science is an environment for discussion, where no
one holds the absolute truth.
Sara Bolognesi acting on the valves of the gas system of the near detector (ND280) of T2K - image credit: Sara Bolognesi
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