Ayana Tamu Arce ( Holloway) is an American physicist and professor of physics at

Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...

. She works on particle physics, using data from the

Large Hadron Collider The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It was built by the CERN, European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008, in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists, ...

to understand phenomena beyond the

Standard Model The Standard Model of particle physics is the Scientific theory, theory describing three of the four known fundamental forces (electromagnetism, electromagnetic, weak interaction, weak and strong interactions – excluding gravity) in the unive ...

Early life and education

Arce was born in

Lansing, Michigan Lansing () is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Michigan. The most populous city in Ingham County, Michigan, Ingham County, parts of the city extend into Eaton County, Michigan, Eaton County and nort ...

and studied physics at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

, graduating with honors and a bachelor's degree in 1998. She moved on to

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

for her PhD, working as the Collider Detector at the Fermilab (CDF) detector at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. She completed her PhD in 2006.

Family

Her mother, Karla, is James B. Duke Professor of English and Law at

, with special interest in African American culture. Her father, Russell Holloway, is a computer scientist and

Pratt School of Engineering The Duke University Pratt School of Engineering is the engineering school of Duke University, a private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. The school was created by the Board of Trustees at Duke University as the Coll ...

's Associate Dean for Corporate and Industrial Relations.

Research

After her Ph.D., Arce completed a Chamberlain post-doctoral fellowship at

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL, Berkeley Lab) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in the Berkeley Hills, hills of Berkeley, California, United States. Established i ...

, where she worked on experimental techniques to measure the properties of heavy unstable particles. Arce joined

in 2010 and was made a

Woodrow Wilson Foundation The Woodrow Wilson Foundation was an educational non-profit created in 1921, organized under the laws of New York, for the "perpetuation of Wilson's ideals" via periodic grants to worthy groups and individuals. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the chai ...

Fellow in 2012. Arce is working on the

calorimeter A calorimeter is a device used for calorimetry, or the process of measuring the heat of chemical reactions or physical changes as well as heat capacity. Differential scanning calorimeters, isothermal micro calorimeters, titration calorimeters ...

detector at the

ATLAS experiment ATLAS is the largest general-purpose particle detector experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland. The experiment is designed to take advantage of ...

. She is working on jet substructure reconstruction, and the use of jet tagging in diboson resonances. In 2017 Arce and her mother, Karla, were involved in

's commemorations of 50 years of Black faculty scholarship. She was excited by the film ''

Hidden Figures ''Hidden Figures'' is a 2016 American Biographical film, biographical Drama (film and television), drama film directed by Theodore Melfi and written by Melfi and Allison Schroeder. It is loosely based on the 2016 non-fiction Hidden Figures (boo ...

'' and has taken part in national discussions looking at how to engage more people of colour in scientific careers. She is part of the

Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory The Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory, abbreviated as TUNL (pronounced as "tunnel"), is a tripartite research consortium operated by Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University and North ...

research consortium, which supports undergraduate students to complete summer research projects in nuclear and particle physics.

References

External links

SCHOLARS@DUKE
{{DEFAULTSORT:Arce, Ayana American theoretical physicists American particle physicists Harvard University alumni Princeton University alumni Duke University faculty 21st-century American physicists 21st-century American women scientists American women physicists People from Lansing, Michigan Scientists from Michigan African-American women scientists American women academics 21st-century African-American women 21st-century African-American scientists Living people Year of birth missing (living people)