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DESY News: Helmholtz International Fellow Award for Constantia Alexandrou

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2019/10/25
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Helmholtz International Fellow Award for Constantia Alexandrou

Particle physicist will visit DESY as a research fellow

Today, Professor Constantia Alexandrou from the University of Cyprus received the International Fellow Award, which is presented by the Helmholtz Association. Alexandrou, who also works at the Cyprus Institute, is considered one of the most outstanding theoretical physicists of our day; her research covers a range of topics from the structure of hadrons, through uncovering the nature of dark matter, to quantum computing. In addition to the prize money of 20,000 euros, she is being invited to spend a research visit at DESY.

Constantia Alexandrou is the founder and director of the “Computation-based Science and Technology Research Center” (CaSToRC) and head of the “Laboratory of High Performance Computing” at the Cyprus Institute. Among other things, she used state-of-the- art supercomputers to help solve a puzzle that was one of the key focuses of research at the HERA accelerator for more than thirty years: How do quarks and gluons, the building blocks that make up protons, contribute to the proton’s spin? For her analysis, widely considered to be a milestone in unravelling the proton spin puzzle, she worked closely with the “Particle Physics” research group at DESY’s John von Neumann Institute for Computing (NIC).

As a recognised expert, Constantia Alexandrou is a member of numerous international committees. She is also strongly involved in international research policies and is pushing for scientific development and cross-border collaboration in eastern Mediterranean countries – among other things as a delegate for Cyprus to the Council of SESAME (Synchrotron Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East).

“Constantia Alexandrou is an impressive physicist and expert in supercomputing,” says Joachim Mnich, DESY’s Director for Particle Physics. “We are very much looking forward to welcoming her to DESY and we hope to break entirely new ground with her, for example in the field of quantum computing.” Potential applications for this could lie in the field of experimental particle physics, e.g. at the LHC, in photon science, and also in developing quantum computing within the Helmholtz Association.

Along with Alexandrou, four other researchers also received the Helmholtz International Fellow Award this year. The award, which has been presented since 2012 and is endowed from the Helmholtz President’s Initiative and Networking Fund, targets researchers as well as science managers based outside Germany, who have excelled in fields of research that are relevant to Helmholtz Association. The programme aims to strengthen international cooperation within the Helmholtz Association.

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