She gained her PhD in 1989 from the University of Milan.
She worked on several experiments at the CERN laboratory in Geneva: UA2, ALEPH and ATLAS at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
She became a member of the CERN staff in 1996.
She held several senior roles in the ATLAS experiment before being elected as Spokesperson between 2009 and 2013.
This position is one of the most senior leadership positions in the field of experimental particle physics.
She was responsible for a collaboration of nearly 3,000 physicists from more than 170 international institutions.
Her role has been central to the most recent high point of the LHC programme, the discovery of the Higgs boson.
She is a member of the Italian “Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei”.
In 2012 she was awarded the title of Grande Ufficiale al merito della Repubblica by the Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and the Special Fundamental Physics Prize of the Milner Foundation.
This year she received the Italian Nonino Prize and the Enrico Fermi Prize of the Italian Physical Society.
She will be associated with the Experimental Particle Physics Group in the School of Physics and Astronomy.
She is also a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics at the University of Edinburgh.