General Director of CERN Fabiola Gianotti will receive an honorary doctorate from Radboud University in Nijmegen today. The university is awarding seven honorary doctorates this year as part of its centenary celebrations.
The honorary doctorates will be awarded in Nijmegen during the annual Dies celebration on Oct. 17. Each faculty awards an honorary doctorate. The honorary doctorates, according to the university, have each made efforts in their own way to raise their field to a higher level.
Fabiola Gianotti is receiving an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Natural Sciences, with a strong Nikhef group in particle physics and particle physicist Sijbrand de Jong as dean. Radboud University particle physicist Nicolo de Groot is Gianotti’s honorary promotor.
Particle physicist Gianotti led the search for the Higgs particle with the ATLAS detector leading up to its discovery in 2012. The discovery led to the Nobel Prize in physics for theorists Francois Englert and Peter Higgs, who predicted the particle decades earlier.
As general director of CERN since 2016, Gianotti has been the figurehead of particle physics worldwide. She was the first female director of CERN and also the first to be re-elected for a full second term.
Gianotti is making an effort to remove barriers for female scientists in a field that is predominantly male. Specifically, she wants to provide more support for women when they have children, something she says she has received too little of in her own career.