Dr. Shikma Bressler

Department of Particle Physics and Astrophysics Weizmann Institute of Science

Dr. Shikma Bressler was born and raised in the Jezreel Valley (Emek Israel). She completed her BSc summa cum laude in physics and mathematics at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in 2003, followed by her MSc cum laude in physics in 2006, and PhD in 2011. In 2012, Dr. Bressler joined the Weizmann Institute of Science as a postdoctoral fellow and in 2013 was hired as a scientist to form a particle physics and detector development team. In 2015 she joined the faculty in the Department of Particle Physics and Astrophysics.

As a high-energy experimental physicist, Dr. Bressler is an active member of the ATLAS collaboration at the large hadron collider at CERN that “discovered” evidence of the Higgs boson.  Although this historic experimental effort confirmed the last missing piece of the “Standard Model” describing the world of elementary particles and physics, Dr. Bressler is interested in new areas of physics that go beyond the standard model. Her work in developing new technologies and experimental procedures for particle detectors aids scientific research in particle-physics and astrophysics, and has potential interest for non-scientific applications in homeland security, medicine, archeology and more.

Dr. Bressler was honored with the Israel Physical Society’s (IPS) Ze'ev Fraenkel Prize in Particle Physics, Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics in 2010. She was awarded a Gutwirth scholarship in 2008 and a Polak Scholarship at the Technion in 2007. She was awarded the Sir Charles Clore Prize for Research in 2016.

Dr. Bressler lives in Moshav Beit Shearim in the Jezreel Valley and has two children.