The researcher of the Superior Council for Scientific Research at IFIC is the first woman to win this award. The award recognizes her career in particle physics, where she participated in one of the experiments that discovered the Higgs boson
The Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICIU) has announced today the list of the winners of the National Research Awards 2024. The research professor at the Institute of Corpuscular Physics (IFIC), located in the University of Valencia Science Park, Carmen Garcia has obtained this recognition in the modality of Physical Sciences Blas Cabrera. She is the first woman awarded in this category since the Government has been granting these awards.
Carmen García has received this award for the impact of her scientific career, recognized both nationally and internationally, and the excellence of her research in particle physics, focused on the study of the fundamental components of matter and its interactions. His contributions to the search for long half-life particles, the development of trace detectors and his participation in the ATLAS experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), key to the discovery of the Higgs boson, stand out.
After learning the names of the winners, Minister Diana Morant said that, “for the first time since the awards were announced, two women have been awarded in the category of Physical, Materials and Earth Sciences and in Medicine”, thus breaking with a “historical anomaly whereby women did not have adequate representation in these fields”.
The National Research Awards granted by the MICIU, which have 20 modalities endowed with 30,000 euros each, are, according to Minister Diana Morant, “the most important recognition of Spain in the field of scientific research”. In the same way, Morant highlighted the talent of the winners, whose “science of excellence not only contributes to the progress and welfare of society, but also to the strengthening of our country”. In addition, the minister remarked that the current edition has the largest number of female awardees to date, “since in previous years there were fewer applications from female researchers”.
About the award winner
Carmen García García (La Yesa, Valencia, 1962) holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Valencia (1990). She is currently a CSIC research professor at the Institute of Corpuscular Physics (IFIC). Specialized in experimental particle physics, her work focuses on the construction of large detectors, their operation and the analysis of a large amount of data, always framed in large international collaborations. He did his doctoral thesis at the Soudan-II experiment in Minnesota (USA), and has subsequently worked at the two large accelerators at CERN (Switzerland): at the DELPHI experiment of the LEP accelerator and at the ATLAS experiment of the LHC. In the latter, the Higgs boson was discovered in 2012.
In addition to making major contributions at CERN, Carmen García has been a researcher at Rutheford Appleton Laboratory (UK) and Argonne National Laboratory (USA). She has also held the positions of deputy director of IFIC; coordinator of the CSIC Physics and Physical Technologies Area; deputy coordinator of the CSIC Global Matter Area; president of the CSIC Large Infrastructures Commission; and founding partner of the technology-based company Alibava Systems.