Alessandro Strumia (born 26 December 1969)
is an Italian physicist at the
University of Pisa
The University of Pisa ( it, Università di Pisa, UniPi), officially founded in 1343, is one of the oldest universities in Europe.
History
The Origins
The University of Pisa was officially founded in 1343, although various scholars place ...
. His research focuses on
high energy physics
Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of Elementary particle, fundamental particles and fundamental interaction, forces that constitute matter and radiation. The fundamental particles in the universe are classified in the Standa ...
, beyond the
Standard Model, studying the
flavour of
elementary particle
In particle physics, an elementary particle or fundamental particle is a subatomic particle that is not composed of other particles. Particles currently thought to be elementary include electrons, the fundamental fermions ( quarks, leptons, a ...
,
charge conjugation parity (CP) symmetry violations, and the
Higgs boson. In September 2018, Strumia gave a controversial presentation at
CERN's first Workshop on High Energy Theory and Gender, where he claimed that male, not female scientists, were the victims of discrimination on the part of universities.
Education
Strumia obtained his
PhD in 1995, at the
University of Pisa
The University of Pisa ( it, Università di Pisa, UniPi), officially founded in 1343, is one of the oldest universities in Europe.
History
The Origins
The University of Pisa was officially founded in 1343, although various scholars place ...
, where his
doctoral advisor
A doctoral advisor (also dissertation director, dissertation advisor; or doctoral supervisor) is a member of a university faculty whose role is to guide graduate students who are candidates for a doctorate, helping them select coursework, as well ...
was
Riccardo Barbieri. His
thesis
A thesis ( : theses), or dissertation (abbreviated diss.), is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings.International Standard ISO 7144: ...
was titled ''Supersymmetric unification''.
Career
Strumia's research specialization is in
physics beyond the Standard Model.
In 1995, with
Riccardo Barbieri and
Lawrence J. Hall, he studied
flavour and
CP violation
In particle physics, CP violation is a violation of CP-symmetry (or charge conjugation parity symmetry): the combination of C-symmetry (charge symmetry) and P-symmetry ( parity symmetry). CP-symmetry states that the laws of physics should be th ...
s, present in
supersymmetric unified theories even in the absence of any flavour or CP violation in the input for the
soft-supersymmetry breaking parameters.
He is one of the originators of the idea of Minimal Flavor Violation, a proposal to characterize the effects of flavor transitions in new theories of
particle physics
Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The fundamental particles in the universe are classified in the Standard Model as fermions (matter particles) an ...
. In 2004, together with
Riccardo Barbieri,
Alex Pomarol
Alex is a given name. It can refer to a shortened version of Alexander, Alexandra, Alexis.
People
Multiple
*Alex Brown (disambiguation), multiple people
*Alex Gordon (disambiguation), multiple people
*Alex Harris (disambiguation), multiple peop ...
and
Riccardo Rattazzi
Riccardo Rattazzi (born 1964) is an Italian theoretical physicist and a professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. His main research interests are in physics beyond the Standard Model and in cosmology.
Career
Riccardo Rattazz ...
, Alessandro Strumia laid out a conceptually clear and practically useful framework for the analysis of the combined electroweak precision data of the low- and high-energy phases of the
LEP experiments. After the
OPERA experiment
The Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus (OPERA) was an instrument used in a scientific experiment for detecting tau neutrinos from muon neutrino oscillations. The experiment is a collaboration between CERN in Geneva, Switzerla ...
reported an observation of
neutrinos apparently traveling faster than light, Strumia in collaboration with
Gian Giudice
Gian Francesco Giudice (born January 25, 1961) is an Italian theoretical physicist working at CERN in particle physics and cosmology.
Academic career
After graduating in physics from the University of Padua in 1984, Giudice obtained in 1988 his ...
and Sergey Sibiryakov showed that
superluminal neutrinos
In 2011, the OPERA experiment mistakenly observed neutrinos appearing to travel faster-than-light, faster than light. Even before the source of the error was discovered, the result was considered anomalous because speeds higher than that of li ...
would imply some anomalies in the velocities of
electron
The electron ( or ) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family,
and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no ...
s and
muons as a result of quantum-mechanical effects. Such anomalies could be already ruled out from existing data on cosmic rays, thus contradicting the OPERA results.
After the discovery of the
Higgs boson, he computed the probability that the Higgs vacuum undergoes
quantum tunnelling, finding that the
universe
The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. ...
is in a critical state which will eventually end in a cosmic collapse. He joined the
European Organization for Nuclear Research
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...
(CERN)'s theory division as a fellow in 2000,
and as a member of the
CMS Collaboration, he was a credited coauthor on the paper which announced the Higgs boson discovery; his primary affiliation was
Estonia
Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...
's
National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics
National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics (NICPB; Estonian Keemilise ja Bioloogilise Füüsika Instituut, or KBFI) is public non-profit research institute
A research institute, research centre, research center or research organizati ...
. Along with
Joseph Lykken and other collaborators, he later proposed the "modified naturalness" hypothesis for the Higgs boson's mass.
While at CERN in June 2018, Strumia and Riccardo Torre worked on a new set of algorithms with which to evaluate the impact of published scientific research. Basing their investigation on
PageRank
PageRank (PR) is an algorithm used by Google Search to rank webpages, web pages in their search engine results. It is named after both the term "web page" and co-founder Larry Page. PageRank is a way of measuring the importance of website pages. A ...
used by
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
, they proposed a similar system of ranking scientific papers and authors. Researchers had "mixed reaction", suggesting that it would be useful for "lifetime achievement" but possibly subject to "transparency issues".
The "simplicity" of current methods of evaluation allows for
gaming the system. The difference in Strumia and Torres' approach is that they include what they describe as "second-generation" and later-generation citations in their algorithms. Therefore, not only the original citations of the work are taken into account, but subsequent citations to derivative material also. They named their systems ''PaperRank'' and ''AuthorRank''. They also proposed a system called ''CitationCoin'' to reduce the effect of groups who "inflate" each other citation count.
Controversies
Using pictures of conference slides
Marco Cirelli and Alessandro Strumia were amongst multiple teams that used digital photos from a conference presentation by other authors in 2008 in Stockholm for a subsequent publication. The presentation showed a highly anticipated but yet unpublished measurement of the
positron fraction in
cosmic ray
Cosmic rays are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Solar System in our own ...
s by the
PAMELA
Pamela may refer to:
*''Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded'', a novel written by Samuel Richardson in 1740
*Pamela (name), a given name and, rarely, a surname
* Pamela Spence, a Turkish pop-rock singer. Known as her stage name "Pamela"
* MSC ''Pamela'', ...
collaboration.
Talk on gender discrimination
On 28 September 2018, Strumia gave a presentation at
CERN's first Workshop on High Energy Theory and Gender that provoked considerable controversy.
Citing an analysis he had performed on data from the
InSpire database, he tested the idea that there is a gender bias against women within the academic circles of physics. He claimed that his results suggest that male scientists were victims of discrimination.
On 30 September 2018, CERN released a short statement, removed the slides of Strumia's presentation from its conference website and on 1 October, suspended him from his "invited scientist" position, due to a breach of Code of Conduct (naming a CERN employee in the presentation).
On 1 October 2018, the University of Pisa released a statement signaling the opening of an ethical investigation and subsequently sanctioned him.
Strumia's talk was condemned in a public letter titled “High Energy Physics Community Statement” on a website called “Particles for Justice” on 2 October. As of 13 October, it received nearly 4,000 signatures from scientists working in High Energy Physics and related fields, including those of
John Ellis,
Howard Georgi
Howard Mason Georgi III (born January 6, 1947) is an American theoretical physicist and the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Harvard College Professor at Harvard University. He is also Director of Undergraduate Studies in Physics. He was Co-M ...
and
David Gross
David Jonathan Gross (; born February 19, 1941) is an American theoretical physicist and string theorist. Along with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer, he was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of asymptotic freedom. ...
. In response, a rebuttal titled "Justice For Strumia" was published online along with a petition for reinstatement of Strumia.
Subsequently, the petition and the list of "2370 signatories from 90 countries" were sent to the director general of CERN receiving "no response". An anonymous commentary on Strumia's talk and the community response was published in ''Areo'' magazine.
One supporter of Strumia was the former
string theorist
In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and intera ...
Luboš Motl
Luboš Motl (; born 5 December 1973) is a Czech physicist and blogger. He was an assistant professor in physics at Harvard University from 2004 to 2007. His scientific publications were focused on string theory.
Life and career
Motl was born in ...
. Physicist
Sabine Hossenfelder
Sabine Hossenfelder (born 1976) is a German theoretical physicist, author, musician and YouTuber. She is currently employed as a research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies. She is the author of ''Lost in Math: How Beauty Le ...
performed an alternative analysis using a different database and found that after accounting for
disproportionately higher rates of women leaving the field the sex differences become negligible.
In a later paper, she defended Strumia's publication in the journal ''
Quantitative Science Studies (QSS)'', calling the findings "significant and robust", while cautioning that the study "cannot reveal the origin of the existing gender differences".
On March 7, 2019, CERN confirmed that Strumia's status as guest professor will not be continued. Following this announcement, Strumia uploaded an unofficial recording of the event on a newly started website, where he claimed that his position had been misrepresented in the media.
In November 2019, the journal ''
Quantitative Science Studies (QSS)'' announced it would publish the paper. The journal published the paper in 2021, and in the following issue published four critical commentaries about it, along with Strumia's response to the commentaries.
See also
*
Resistance to diversity efforts in organizations
Resistance (also referred to as backlash) to diversity efforts in organizations is a well-established and ubiquitous phenomenon that may be characterized by thoughts, feelings, or behaviors that undermine the success of diversity-related organiza ...
*
Variability hypothesis
The variability hypothesis, also known as the greater male variability hypothesis, is the hypothesis that males generally display greater variability in traits than females do.
It has often been discussed in relation to human cognitive ability, w ...
*
Women in STEM fields
Many scholars and policymakers have noted that the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have remained predominantly male with historically low participation among women since the origins of these fields in the 18th ce ...
References
External links
*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Strumia, Alessandro
Living people
Academic staff of the University of Pisa
1969 births
University of Pisa alumni
21st-century Italian physicists
People associated with CERN