Marcela Carena, a long-time research leader at Fermilab, the primary centre for particle physics research in the United States, takes over the directorship of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ont.Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics has a new leader.
On Monday, the Waterloo, Ont.-based institute, which is dedicated to pursuing fundamental questions about the nature of reality, announced the appointment of Marcela Carena as its executive director.
Dr. Carena, a long-time research leader at Fermilab, the primary centre for particle physics research in the United States, takes over the directorship from Roberts Myers, who will continue on as a member of Perimeter’s permanent faculty.
Born in Argentina, Dr. Carena received her PhD from the University of Hamburg and held research positions in the United States, Germany and Switzerland before coming to Fermilab in 1996. For the past nine years she has led the facility’s theory division while holding a part-time professorship at the University of Chicago. Her research work is focused on unexplained aspects of the universe that make our existence possible, including why matter came to be more abundant than antimatter in the aftermath of the Big Bang.
Dr. Carena is Perimeter’s fourth director and the first woman to lead the institute since it was established by Research in Motion (later BlackBerry Ltd.) co-founder Mike Lazaridis nearly 25 years ago.
She takes up the position at a time of some confusion in theoretical physics. For years, researchers have been searching for a new theory that will unite the laws of physics and explain phenomena such as dark matter – an unknown substance that accounts for most of the mass in the universe. But since the Higgs boson, an elementary particle, was confirmed in 2012 by experiments at the Large Hadron Collider – a 27-kilometre particle accelerator ring near Geneva – there have been no further discoveries that would definitively point the way toward the next breakthrough.
Dr. Marcela spoke with The Globe and Mail about the state of the field and her new role.
Q: Why were you attracted to come to Perimeter?
I’m really thrilled about the possibility of creating new opportunities for theoretical research that I think can be transformational for our understanding of the universe. Perimeter is a special place because it encourages cross-cutting research that can really flourish only in an unstructured environment such as we have here.
Q: How does that help with Perimeter’s mission?
We are asking the most difficult questions we have about our universe. And those questions have become very cross-disciplinary. When I think about my own research, I need to be aware of and learn about what other fields in physics have learned and have undertaken. Perimeter has this uniqueness that you have almost all areas of physics – maybe all areas in the future – sitting under the same roof. So if I have a difficult question in particle physics it may go through cosmology and astrophysics or go through issues related to what we call quantum matter, which taps into quantum information, or into other areas of theoretical physics. We really need to have all of that expertise. One hundred and something years ago physics was just one entity that then became more specialized. Now we are kind of coming together again.
Q: How well did you know the institute before you thought about taking the job?
As soon as Perimeter started to shine we all became aware of it in the physics community. Personally, I got to know Perimeter more closely when we started competing for postdoctoral fellows. Sometimes we won, sometimes we lost to Perimeter. Most recently – four years ago I was asked to join the scientific advisory committee and then two years later I became the chair of the committee. When you are part of an advisory committee you really get into the soul of the institution you are looking at, and that happened to me with Perimeter.
Q: There has been a lot of talk about theoretical physics being in a crisis because of a recent lack of discoveries, such as new particles. What is your feeling about where the field stands?
I wouldn’t describe it as being in a crisis. We have answered many questions, that’s true, and what is left are the very difficult questions. That’s why we are here. And because they are difficult, we are not just going to open the drawer and find the answer. We discovered the Higgs and that was a big boost but we need to understand what lies behind that. We have discovered gravitational waves that come from black hole mergers. That’s fascinating! And in order to deal with all that data we are contributing non-stop to the evolution of technology in society. So, if you ask me, I am excited about what physics can do.
Q: What inspired you to go into physics?
I think I got into physics when I was five or six years old and I was in the Argentinian countryside staring at the Milky Way. I had no idea of the physics behind those stars, but it was breathtaking and I think that’s when I got excited. During high school, I had one influential math teacher who was kind of a role model for me. So I think I was very lucky that I was given many opportunities. My family was very supportive, although they were not in science at all.
Q: What have you learned as a research leader?
I have learned a lot from my colleagues. I think I also learned a lot from my students. That’s the good side about science. When you are talking about learning and exploring, seniority doesn’t matter. You are working together – elbow to elbow is the expression in Spanish – because you are fascinated by finding the answers. And that’s all that matters.
This interview has been edited and condensed