"Florencia was an inexhaustible bundle of energy and great fun to work with during her graduate years," says Ferbel. "Her development at Fermilab has been quite breathtaking, and she continues to impress me with her determination, her vigor, and her insights."
Canelli helped develop and implement a more effective technique to measure the spins of "W bosons." The standard model of particle physics predicts that these
W bosons have negative helicity, meaning they spin like left-handed screws. Finding evidence for W bosons of right-handed helicity would revolutionize the accepted understanding of particle interactions, making the measurement particularly important to physics.
Canelli says she felt "proud and thankful" when she learned she had won the award, which consists of $1,500 and an allowance of up to $1,000 for travel to attend the annual meeting of the Division of Particles and Fields where the award will be presented.
"I never could have done this without the help of Tom Ferbel," says Canelli, who is a postdoctoral student at the University of California at Los Angeles and stationed at Fermilab where she is the head of a group studying a top quark experiment.
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Grad student wins dissertation award
aria Florencia Canelli, a recent doctoral student, has won the American Physical Society's 2005 Mitsuyoshi Tanaka Dissertation Award in Experimental Particle Physics. Her dissertation, completed in 2003 at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., under the supervision of Thomas Ferbel, professor of physics, bested all other doctoral theses from around the world. The Tanaka Award recognizes exceptional young scientists who performed outstanding original doctoral work in experimental particle physics.
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