Mairi Sakellariadou: Science does not get along with make-dos, like models: it needs theories

About the speaker

Mairi Sakellariadou is a theoretical physicist who works in particle physics, gravitation, and cosmology, with emphasis on the physics of the early universe. She studied mathematics at the University of Athens and then astrophysics at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge. She obtained her PhD at Tufts University, Massachusetts. After postdoctoral stays at, among others, the University of Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris, University of Zurich, University of Geneva and CERN, she became Associate Professor at the University of Athens. In 2005 she joined King's College as a Reader and was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics there in 2011. She is Chair of the "Gravitational Physics" Division of European Physical Society. She is member of various collaborations and consortia, among others the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the LISA consortium, and the MoEDAL experiment.

Prof. Sakellariadou investigates general relativity and several approaches to quantum gravity, such as noncommutative geometry, string/M-theory, loop quantum gravity or group field theory, and focuses, in particular, on testing them against astrophysical, cosmological and high energy physics data, using, effectively, the early universe as our laboratory.