Fabiola Gianotti

Fabiola Gianotti (Italian: [faˈbiːola dʒaˈnɔtti]; born 29 October 1960) is an Italian experimental particle physicist who served as Director-General of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) from 2016 to 2026.

From an early age, Gianotti was interested in nature and the world around her. Her mother, from Sicily, encouraged Gianotti in the fine arts. Her father, an acclaimed geologist from Piedmont, encouraged her early love of learning and encouraged her scientific interests.

Gianotti found her passion for scientific research after reading a biography of Marie Curie. Previously, she had studied the humanities, focusing on music and philosophy at the Liceo classico. Gianotti received a PhD in experimental particle physics from the Physics department of the University of Milan in 1989.

Since 1996, Gianotti has worked at CERN, starting with a fellowship and continuing to become a full-time research physicist. In 2009 she was promoted to project leader and Spokesperson of the ATLAS Collaboration. She also worked on the WA70, UA2 and ALEPH experiments at CERN, where she was involved in detector development, software development and data analysis. In 2016 she was elected to be the first female Director-General of CERN. She has since been reappointed for a second term, which will end in 2025.

She has been a member of several international committees, such as the Scientific Council of the CNRS in France, the Physics Advisory Committee of Fermilab in the US, the Council of the European Physical Society, the Scientific Council of the DESY Laboratory in Germany, and the Scientific Advisory Committee of NIKHEF in the Netherlands. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the UN Secretary-General. She was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2018.

Gianotti is also a member of the Italian Academy of Sciences (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei),^{[citation needed]} a foreign associate member of the US National Academy of Sciences and foreign associate of the French Academy of Sciences. She was also elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019. Since 2013, she is an honorary professor at the University of Edinburgh. She is associated with the Experimental Particle Physics Group in the School of Physics and Astronomy and also a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics at the University of Edinburgh.

Gianotti also appeared in the 2013 documentary film Particle Fever about work at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

Gianotti is a member of the Board of Trustees of the World Economic Forum.