Maria Elena Monzani
Photo credit: Farrin Abbott, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Elena Monzani is a dark matter data wrangler. Her research field is Astroparticle physics, which focuses on topics at the intersection between particle physics and astrophysics/cosmology, using the tools of data-intensive science. She received a dual Ph.D. from the University of Milano and the University of Paris 7, performing research with the Borexino experiment that measured neutrinos produced by the Sun. She then held a postdoctoral position at Columbia University before joining Stanford in 2007 to work on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Today, Monzani is a lead scientist at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and a senior member of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. She manages the software computing effort for the LZ Dark Matter Experiment and the science operations team for the Fermi satellite. She is also an Adjunct Scholar at the Vatican Observatory and enjoys discussing the shared philosophical foundations of scientific and religious endeavors.
