Ep. 11 : Conversation with Seema Sharma - The Experimental Particle Physicist

Seema Sharma is an experimental particle physicist who was also part of the experimental discovery of Higgs Boson at CERN. She is an Associate Professor, in the department of physics at the Indian institute of Science education research, Pune – India. Seema Sharma’s Webpage: ⁠http://sites.iiserpune.ac.in/~seema/⁠.     In this episode we discuss about her journey from Rajsamand Rajasthan, to TIFR Bombay, then to FermiLab US and then to IISER Pune. We did a deep dive on what it takes to be an experimental physicist. We discuss about the role of conceptual understanding of various topics in physics, including quantum physics, to do cutting edge experiments. She further revealed her understanding of doing mega science projects in large collaborative networks and how it has influenced her thinking. There is a small and nice segment in Hindi in which Seema explains about her research and motivations. Listen…as we humanize science References: 1.       “Rajsamand.” In Wikipedia, January 19, 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rajsamand&oldid=1134565017 2.       “The Higgs Boson | CERN.” Accessed July 10, 2023. https://home.cern/science/physics/higgs-boson. 3.       “Tata Institute of Fundamental Research | TIFR.” Accessed July 10, 2023. https://www.tifr.res.in/. 4.       “Sunanda Banerjee.” Accessed July 10, 2023. http://iacs.res.in/athusers/index.php?navid=0&userid=IACS090. 5.       “Fermilab | Home.” Accessed July 10, 2023. https://www.fnal.gov/. 6.       “Home | CERN.” Accessed July 10, 2023. https://home.cern/. 7.       “Inquiring Minds.” Accessed July 10, 2023. https://www.fnal.gov/pub/inquiring/physics/index.html. 8.       “The Large Hadron Collider | CERN.” Accessed July 10, 2023. https://home.cern/science/accelerators/large-hadron-collider. 9.       Weinberg, Steven. “Four Golden Lessons.” Nature 426, no. 6965 (November 2003): 389–389. https://doi.org/10.1038/426389a. 10.   “William Dalrymple (Historian).” In Wikipedia, July 1, 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_Dalrymple_(historian)&oldid=1162930456.