Francesca Dordei

As part of the competition, the Young Woman of Science Award was assigned by the Department of Equal Opportunities of the Municipality of Cagliari to Francesca Dordei, 35 years old, INFN researcher from Cagliari, at the Cagliari section, with the following motivation: “For the excellent academic and research career at national and international level, in particular for the participation in the CERN LHCb project and in two projects that determine a very important impact on the territory: the ARIA Project linked to the DARKSIDE experiment and the Einstein Telescope Project. For her commitment in the field of issues related to stereotypes and gender discrimination, in the field of dissemination to which she has dedicated herself since she was a very young physics student at the University of Cagliari and in the field of teaching with the foundation, together with other , by IDeAS, a project that aims to communicate science through an agile form of teaching, innovative and interdisciplinary, conveying the complex and most recent contents of research in physics and astrophysics with a passionate and interactive dissemination activity.

Francesca Dordei boasts an excellent academic and research background. Her activity is documented by hundreds of scientific publications, and was mainly carried out in the LHCb experiment at CERN which essentially has the purpose of better understanding the small but crucial differences that exist between matter and antimatter by measuring the parameters of the violation of charge-parity symmetry (CP) in elementary particles which have as constituent one of the quarks called “beauty”. She graduated and specialized in Cagliari with Prof. Biagio Saitta, acquiring the cultural and technical foundations necessary for her brilliant future as a researcher. Subsequently she obtained her PhD in Heidelberg continuing her research work as a fellow at CERN. Still very young, she won the competition for permanent researcher announced by the National Institute of Nuclear Physics, choosing the Cagliari office as a base for continuing her research. In Cagliari, in addition to continuing her research in the LHCb experiment, she was engaged in two projects which, with their great international relevance, combine a very important impact on the territory: the ARIA Project linked to the DARKSIDE experiment and the Einstein Telescope Project.

Her commitment in the field of issues related to gender stereotypes and discrimination is demonstrated by her appointment as coordinator of the ECGD (Early Career, Gender and Diversity) group at CERN as representative of the LHCb experiment. This commitment materialized in the drafting of a project for the implementation of a Gender Equality Plan for research centers operating in Sardinia submitted for funding to the Sardinia Region (D.G.R. n. 56/3 of 11.13.2020) which was found to be suitable with excellent ratings.

Francesca Dordei’s commitment in the field of dissemination is well known to ScienzaSocietà Scienza, with which she has been collaborating since she was a physics student at the University of Cagliari. Recently she undertook to found, together with three other physicist colleagues, the IDeAS association (Incontri di Divulgazione e Astrofisica in Sardegna), a project whose aim is to communicate science through an agile, innovative and interdisciplinary form of teaching , conveying the complex and most recent contents of research in physics and astrophysics with a passionate and interactive dissemination activity.