Chair & Professor of Physics, Brown University
Professor Narain is an experimental particle physicist and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Narain is passionate about making physics more welcoming for all marginalized groups by reducing the perceived and real barriers to their participation in physics. She conducts her research with the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (Geneva, Switzerland). Narain studies the interactions of matter at a fraction of a second after the big bang. Narain was instrumental in the discovery of the top quark (1995) and participated in the discovery of the Higgs Boson (2012). Prof. Narain holds a Ph.D. degree in physics from Stony Brook University. Narain is the Co-chair of the Campus Advisory Board of Brown Data Science Initiative. She is the past chair of Brown Physics dept. diversity & inclusion plan, and co-chair of the CMS Diversity Office (2018). Narain is the elected Chair of the Collaboration Board of U.S. CMS (2018-2022) and created history by being the first woman to hold this elected position. and represents the U.S. in the Management Board of the international CMS Experiment. She is a member of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel which advises the Federal Government on the national program in high energy physics (2019-2022).
In January 2020, she was selected to co-lead the activities of the “Energy Frontier” for the APS/DPF Community Planning Exercise to develop a 20-year future vision for particle physics research within the US. Narain is the co-President of the Brown University Sigma Xi Chapter (2020). She is a TEDx speaker, has given numerous public lectures. Narain has been actively engaged in STEM outreach activities to encourage the participation of young women and URM groups in science. Her outreach efforts are numerous, e.g. recently, she spearheaded a pilot program to combine STEM activities with art and design at “WaterFire Providence” visited by 30K people. She continues to act as a role model and a champion for women in science. Narain values learning as a team and building respectful and inclusive communities, in which our passions and vision define us, despite our imperfections.