Melissa Franklin

Melissa Franklin is the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Physics at Harvard University. She is an experimental particle physicist who studies proton-proton collisions produced by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Franklin is a collaborator on the ATLAS experiment at the LHC, working with over 3000 physicists. She was co-discoverer of the top quark and the Higgs boson and is currently studying the properties of the Higgs boson and searching for new physics beyond the Standard Model. Born and raised in Canada, she received her B.Sc. from the University of Toronto and her Doctorate from Stanford University. She joined the Harvard faculty in 1989 and became the first woman to receive tenure in the Physics department in 1992.

Melissa Franklin is a researcher at Harvard University specializing in particle physics and the role of women in physics. Her work focuses on experimental particle physics, particularly within the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). She has contributed to significant discoveries, including the observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson and measurements of Higgs boson production and decay. Her research also addresses the performance of detector systems, such as missing transverse momentum reconstruction and jet energy measurement. Franklin is actively involved in advancing the field of physics through both experimental studies and efforts to promote gender diversity in the discipline.