Honor for Cluster scientist

Every other year the division of Gravitation and Relativity, Hadronic and Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (DPG) honors the most outstanding dissertation from one of those specialist areas. Among the four finalists for this year’s award was the Cluster scientist Dr. Jennifer Girrbach.

Jennifer completed her PhD in February 2011 at the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT). In her dissertation she examined a so called supersymmetric grand unified model (SUSY-GUT), which expands the Standard Model of particle physics. Despite the Standard Model’s great success, which correctly depicts almost all experimental data of fundamental natural forces in mathematical terms, there has been valid evidence regarding physics beyond the Standard Model. Supersymmetric grand unified models are able to connect the different natural forces and offer an explanation for the nature of Dark Matter, which surrounds us in the Universe. These new phenomena and the postulated supersymmetric particles become noticeable through their quantum fluctuations in so called flavor violating decays.

Within the examined SUSY-SO(10)-GUT model, the experimentally proven neutrino oscillations transfer themselves into the quark sector as well as the charged lepton sector. The global analysis of this model which was conducted by Jennifer Girrbach leads to correlations between different observables. Those observables can be tested among others at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and can provide first insights into the physics at distances of 10^(-21).

Among the four finalist of the DPG Dissertation Prize, Jennifer Girrbach’s dissertation was the only work in the field of theoretical particle physics. Even though the prize was awarded to a contender from cosmology, Jennifer’s dissertation counts Germany wide as one of the best within particle physics presented in 2011.

Therefore, Jennifer was already honored with the Erna-Scheffler-Prize. Every other year, this award from the Soroptimist Club Karlsruhe is given to young outstanding female scientists from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Only two years ago, Jennifer Girrbach was awarded this prize also for her diploma thesis.

Since April 2011, Jennifer Girrbach has been a member of Professor Andrzej Buras research group. Buras is founding member and leader of the Cluster’s research area C, which focuses on the origin of particle masses and their hierarchy. Parallel to her activities within the Excellence Cluster Universe, Jennifer Girrbach has been part of Andrzej Buras’ ERC-Project “Towards the construction of the theory of flavor” at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) of the Technical University Munich.