From searching for a potential dark matter candidate to bringing physics education to remote communities
“Shocked” is what Dr. Juliette Mammei felt when she first heard the news of being inducted into the Royal Society of Canada, College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists as she thought it was a long shot when she filled out the application. However, looking at her novel work with the MOLLER experiment and her dedication to improving equity, diversity and inclusion in physics, one can say that induction into the Royal Society of Canada was inevitable and well-deserving.
Mammei is an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Faculty of Science. She is a member of the executive board of MOLLER, the head of the spectrometer group and Co-Pi on the multimillion-dollar Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) grant.
“I’m dedicated to improving equity, diversity and inclusion in physics particularly for women and gender diverse individuals, as well as to improve Indigenous contributions and success in science, particularly physics”, says Juliette Mammei.
Mammei was the chair of the Canadian Institute of Nuclear Physics Scientific Working Group for Nuclear Education and Training and Equity, Diversity and Inclusion for 10 years and she is currently the Vice Chair of the Canadian Association of Physicists Division of Gender Equity in Physics. For over 10 years, she has also hosted students as part of the Verna J. Kirkness program, which brings Indigenous high school students to campus to work in research labs for a week at the beginning of summer.
“One thing I hope to achieve [being inducted into the Royal Society of Canada] is to bring physics education to remote communities particularly Indigenous communities. In order to give students a chance to study physics at university, many remote divisions don’t even offer high school physics. Ideally, I would like to set up remote study for those students who want to take physics classes. But this involves a lot of challenges with provincial curriculum and university requirements. So to begin, I would like to start an adaptive physicist program where elementary school students can meet on zoom with a physicist from Manitoba and send them questions. This will give the volunteer physicists a chance to learn from the students as well”, says Juliette Mammei.
The Standard Model of particles and interactions tells us that everything is made of leptons and quarks. Mammei’s work seeks to test the Standard Model searching for a potential dark matter candidate.
“This is the goal of the MOLLER Experiment a USD 45 million experiment to measure the weak mixing angle, a quantity that has a definite prediction in the Standard Model, so precisely that a deviation would indicate the existence of a new physics particle with a mass up to hundreds of times more massive than the most massive particles yet discovered”, says Juliette Mammei.
Now with being inducted into the Royal Society of Canada, Mammei hopes to continue to work at the cutting edge of subatomic physics.
“After MOLLER, there’s another experiment to measure the weak mixing angle and electron-proton scattering called P2. I hope one of these experiments will give a hint of a new particle. Beyond that, there’s a new accelerator being built in the US called the Electron-Ion Collider which will give us further opportunities to test the Standard Model as well as to continue to improve our understanding of how quarks and gluons work to form the properties of the protons and neutrons. This will help me get closer to an answer to the question, ‘What are we made of?'”, says Juliette Mammei.
To watch the full interview, please visit the Faculty of Science’s YouTube channel.