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Ketevi Assamagan

Elected: 2019

Country (Nationality)

Togo

Discipline

Physical Sciences

Bio

Dr. Kétévi Adiklè Assamagan is a tenured physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). After the BSc from the University of Lomé, he won a scholarship—sponsored and managed by the African-American Institute—to continue higher education in the US. In 1987, he went to the Southern Illinois University to improve his English proficiency before he started the MSc program at Ball State University. After the MSc, he continued with a PhD program at the University of Virginia. During the doctorate program, he went to the Paul Scherrer Institute where he collected the data for his thesis; he obtained the PhD in 1995.

He then accepted a post-doc offer from Hampton University to work at Jefferson Lab where participated in the commissioning of CEBAF­—Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility. He then went to CERN—European Organization for Nuclear Research—as a research scientist to work on the ATLAS Experiment.

In 2001, he accepted a position at BNL.  He continued working on the ATLAS Experiment where he held several positions. He was the coordinator of the physics analysis tools; then the coordinator of the Muon Spectrometer software. Later on, he became the ATLAS Higgs Working Group convener, and was a member of the ATLAS Collaboration that discovered the Higgs boson.  He was visiting scientist at SACLAY, and at the University of Johannesburg, Witwatersrand and UNISA.

He is a co-founder of the African School of Physics, www.africanschoolofphysics.org. His research interests focus on the searches for physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. In this context, he organizes a physics workshop on “Dark interactions: perspective from theory and experiments”, www.bnl.gov/di2018. He is a member of NSBP, APS, AAAS, and SAIP.

He plays African drums. He published a book in English, “Citizen and Traveler” ISBN: 978-0-692-97479-7,  and in French, “Citoyen et Voyageur” ISBN: 978-0-692-08639-1.