Elected: 2020
Country (Nationality)
Algeria
Discipline
Physical Sciences
Bio
Dr Fairouz Malek is a senior scientist and physicist with experience in nuclear research, particle physics and cosmology. She is currently working at CERN (European Organization for Particle Physics) on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and contributed to this century's major discovery in particle physics, the Higgs boson. Prior to that, she participated in a heavy ion collision experiment at CERN's Super Proton Synchrotron, an experiment that contributed to the discovery in 2000 of the quark-gluon plasma state, QGP. She also participated in a NASA space experiment, AMS, to search for antimatter in space. She was born and raised in Algeria where she completed her university studies in physics. After the Master at the Houari-Boumedienne University of Algiers, she had the opportunity to pursue doctoral studies in nuclear physics at the University of Grenoble in France. After her doctorate, she obtained a full research position at the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research) in France. In parallel with her research, she served as team leader of the LPSC Grenoble group participating in the CERN ATLAS experiment. During her tenure, the group contributed to the design, the prototyping and the construction of the Liquid-Argon electromagnetic calorimeter and to the analysis of Higgs physics, the Top quark physics and the search for signals beyond the Standard Model in models with additional dimensions. In 2010, she was called upon to lead the French National Grid Infrastructure (LCG-France) to provide the highest performing computing and grid technology for LHC experiments. She is also a French contact-member of the future circular collider study project, the FCC. In addition to her academic activities, she served at the C13 of IUPAP and IGPD of EPS committees, dealing with physics for developing countries. In 2019, she co-founded the African Strategy for Fundamental Physics and its Applications (ASFAP).