IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2022 - 6

Women to Watch
Reaching Beyond
Da Vià bringing people together
a
As an expert in radiation detectors for
high-energy physics and medical applications,
Dr. Cinzia Da Vià has dedicated her
career to understanding what our world
is made of-and how that knowledge
can best further humanity. The Italian
physicist, who now splits time between
Manchester, United Kingdom, and Long
Island, New York, has been a leader in
her field for decades, achieving work
milestones such as codiscovering the
" Lazarus effect " ; forming the European
Platform on Radiation Detectors and
Imaging; driving the design of 3D detectors,
which contributed to the study of
the Higgs boson; and authoring a book.
Although fewer particle collisions
were needed, she followed the same collaborative,
multipronged approach as
chair of IEEE Women in Engineering's
(WIE's) 25th anniversary celebrations.
The result has been a year-long event
recognizing the innovation and ingenuity,
science, and leadership from the past
25 years that will propel WIE into the
next 25 years.
Opportunity of a Lifetime
Da Vià knew from a young age that she
was going to pursue a career in science,
mathematics, and physics. " From the
time I was really small, I was fascinated
by the beautiful images in magazines, "
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2022.3203132
Date of current version: 7 November 2022
she recalls. " The Internet was not as
available as it is today, so magazines,
books, and TV helped me understand
the field. I fantasized
about science and solving
big problems. " She attended
a scientific high school,
which led to a degree in
physics from Italy's University
of Bologna-a decision
that would kickstart her
entire career journey.
" By complete chance, one day I
was just passing by the corridor where
the university administration office
was, and someone came out to the hallway
and asked me rather abruptly if I
would like to go to CERN, " she shares,
referring to the nuclear research center
in Switzerland. " It turned out someone
who was supposed to go was no longer
available so there was a spot, and I said
yes to taking it. It was supposed to be a
few weeks' internship during the summer,
but I ended up staying 10 years. "
The internship turned into an offer
to do her master's thesis at CERN, which
she accepted. Da Vià had planned to
further her study in fiber optics, and
the work at CERN afforded an option
to study scintillating fibers, which at
the beginning of the 1990s were just
being proposed as possible candidates
for medical applications, such as endoscopy.
" What is interesting about the correlation
between high-energy physics
6
IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2022
and medical applications is that a lot of
the medical imaging and diagnostics
are being performed using radiation, "
she explains. " Today we know that some
tumors can be cured by impinging radiation
beams on the cancer cells, and this
is technology that has been extracted
from high-energy physics. "
She goes on to say that she always
had one eye turned toward the medical
field and still does. " The two fields talk to
one another openly and frequently to the
point where we have joint conferences as
well, " says Da Vià. " At the time I was
beginning my research career,
the overlap was not so obvious,
so I combined these
two passions for myself. "
Da Vià continued this
Cinzia Da Vià
line of study for her Ph.D.
degree at the University of
Glasgow in Scotland (while
on a CERN fellowship), after
which she and a team began working
to address some of the key issues
for high-energy physics detectors at
experiments, such as trying to visualize
the state of the matter at the origin
of the universe through colliding protons
together. Da Vià formed and led the
3D ATLAS pixel R&D Collaboration, an
international collaborative effort that
developed 3D novel detector design. 3D
detectors are used in the ATLAS experiment
at the Large Hadron Collider, the
world's largest and most powerful particle
accelerator, where the Higgs boson
was discovered in 2012.
Da Vià is quick to put these accomplishments
in perspective. " We know
that we are only aware of a very small
fraction of what we are made of in the
universe and that we need to look at
many, many particle collision events
to find a signal that can be statistically
strong enough to be considered a new
discovery, " she says. " Celebrating the
IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2022

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