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ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics | Public Talk

August 7 @ 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm

Free

Minerva Space

Subject: Introduction to Dark Matter

Researchers Across Australia

Researchers from across Australia are working at an underground lab in Stawell to uncover one of the great mysteries of the universe – the nature of dark matter.

Ballarat local H Troon built the laboratory – the first underground physics laboratory in the Southern Hemisphere.

Q & A

This event will provide for a Question and Answer after the talk.

 

Elisabetter Barberio
Speaker: Elisabetta Barberio

The woman blazing a cosmic trail in Australian science.

Elisabetta Barberio remembers playing on the streets of a remote Italian village as a little girl, her sense of the world unfurling.

“I could go around the village and everyone knew me,” the University of Melbourne physicist recalled.

“I was quite free and I never felt cast or put in a particular box.”

It came as a shock when her scientist mother and doctor father moved the family to a small city apartment in the Calabria region of southern Italy.

But within those walls, she opened up her parents’ textbooks and saw something of her future.

“I was 10 when my mother gave me her nuclear physics book, so I started learning about that and liked it a lot,” she said.

“I was curious, always curious.”

Her mother encouraged her to pursue a career rather than marriage, a revolutionary view at the time, which led the future professor to study across Europe.

She was part of a large team of physicists involved in the discovery of the Higgs boson, known as the God particle for its once mysterious role in creating mass and forming the foundations of existence.

“It was like Christmas, waiting for a present and not knowing what the present is,” Professor Barberio said of the research.

“There was adrenaline, like when you see things under the tree and you want to open the box, but you have to wait.”

That childlike sense of wonder about the universe continues to drive her, as director of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics.

While she has witnessed significant shifts in science, slow societal change has been a source of frustration.

Men in the industry have doubted her talents and questioned her leadership at various points in her career.

The only way forward, Prof Barberio believes, is sharing a love of science with more women, just as her mother did.

The Canberra Times | 3 March 2024 by Stephanie Gardiner.
Elisabetta Barberio

Tickets and Bookings

Tickets – Free (bookings essential)

This event takes place on Wadawurrung Country. Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute acknowledges the Wadawurrung People of the Kulin Nation as the first inhabitants and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we work, learn and create. Always Was, Always Will Be, Aboriginal Land.

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