Earlier this week, Emanuela Barzi, a Fermilab senior scientist and Ohio State University adjunct professor and graduate faculty, was elected as councilor of the Executive Committee of the American Physical Society Forum on International Physics, or FIP. On Jan.1, 2018, she will take over for a 4-year term from former FIP Councilor Young-Kee Kim, the Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor and chair of the Department of Physics at the University of Chicago.
Councilors sit on the APS Council of Representatives. The FIP councilor serves as the main point of contact for the FIP, passing the opinions of FIP membership to the APS Council.
The Forum on International Physics is a voluntary association of APS members who are interested in advancing the knowledge of physics and its diffusion by fostering cooperation and communication among physicists of all countries. The FIP organizes focused sessions at APS meetings, receives nominations for APS fellowships and the Wheatley Award, and communicates with its members. The FIP also cooperates with several other APS bodies in charge of international scientific affairs. But the unique strength of the FIP lies in the openness of its agenda, which reflects the grass-roots origin of the forum.
“The FIP mission of expanding international engagements and focus on its long-term strategic planning resonates intensely with me,” Barzi said. “Science and technology are now global, and to foster creativity, excellence and innovation into our specialized sciences, we can use globalization tools to build and operate a strong network of scientific and technological cooperation among different countries and disciplines. The FIP is ideally placed to endorse and motivate cross-fertilization not only within physics itself, but also among adjacent disciplines to produce the broadest benefits to society.”
A 2012 fellow of the American Physical Society, Barzi has been an active member of the high-energy accelerator and physics communities for 20-plus years. The superconducting R&D lab that she founded at Fermilab is a world-leading center in low- and high-temperature superconductor technologies for the next generation of particle accelerators. She is currently the principal investigator of Fermilab magnet technology R&D and a member of the Muon g-2 collaboration. She has co-authored 215 peer-reviewed papers and in 2010 was awarded the Japanese Superconductor Science and Technology Prize. Barzi also established extensive educational programs at Fermilab for graduate students in physics and engineering that have benefited hundreds of young professionals, and she has mentored more than 30 students in her lab as part of their internship, master’s degree and Ph.D. programs.
Fermilab congratulates Barzi on her election in this critical role.