Foundation committee

Felicitas Pauss

Felicitas Pauss is full professor for experimental particle physics at the Institute for Particle Physics (IPP) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich.

Felicitas Pauss studied theoretical physics and mathematics at the University of Graz (A). After a short time as a post-doc at the University of Graz, she accepted a position offered by the Max-Planck Institute of Physics (MPI) in Munich (D) and changed to the field of experimental particle physics. Being employed with MPI from 1978 to 1983, she stayed during this period one year at CERN, the European Center for Particle Physics in Geneva (CH), one year at MPI Munich and three years at the Cornell University in Ithaca (USA). From 1983 to 1991 she was employed at CERN, first as CERN Fellow, followed by a staff position as research physicist. In 1991, Felicitas Pauss became a member of the Institute for Particle Physics at ETH Zurich. In 1993, she was elected as assistant professor and since 2000 she is full professor. Since 1997, she is the Head of the Institute.

Besides lecturing, her research activities concentrate on the field of the fundamental building blocks of matter and their interactions. For this basic research, experiments are carried out on high-energy accelerators like L3 at LEP (LEP was shut down in November 2000 after 12 years of successful data taking) and the CMS Experiment at the future LHC at CERN as well as the AMS experiment in space. With these experiments, answers to fundamental open questions in particle physics are seeked, leading to a better understanding of what happened to the Universe after the Big Bang.

Felicitas Pauss was and still is a member of numerous national and international scientific committees, such as the Scientific Policy Committee at CERN, Member of the Science Council of the Hahn-Meitner Institute in Berlin, Member of the Scientific Council of DESY as well as of the Fundamental Advisory Group of ESA.

In 2003 she received the "Grosse Ehrenzeichen des Landes Steiermark” (Austria).