Mary Bishai to Deliver Distinguished Scientist Fellow Lecture, 1/14

January 7, 2025

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2024 Distinguished Scientist Fellow Mary Bishai is shown in the "cold microelectronics" testing station at Brookhaven Lab, where scientists developed specialized electronics that can operate in the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment's cryogenic detector. (Jessica Rotkiewicz/Brookhaven National Laboratory)

Editor’s note: The following feature story has been adapted from the U.S. Department of Energy’s website. To learn more about Mary Bishai and the Distinguished Scientist Fellowship, read the Brookhaven Lab press release.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced four national laboratory scientists as the 2024 DOE Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellows. The Distinguished Scientist Fellows award, authorized by the America COMPETES Act, is bestowed on DOE national laboratory scientists with outstanding records of achievement and provides each Fellow with $1 million in direct funding to support activities that develop, sustain, and promote scientific and academic excellence in DOE Office of Science research.

Please join DOE in celebrating the outstanding accomplishments of the 2024 Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellows: Mary Raafat Mikhail Bishai of Brookhaven National Laboratory, Lois Curfman McInnes of Argonne National Laboratory, Kristin Persson of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Gerald A. Tuskan of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The Office of Science will host a four-part lecture series featuring the 2024 Distinguished Scientist Fellows. Proceedings will include an award ceremony, technical talk covering the Fellows’ science and career, and a Q&A session. Fellows will discuss their research accomplishments, career trajectories, and experiences working at the DOE national laboratories. Photos and a recording of each lecture will be available online soon after each event.

The events are open to the public to attend virtually on Zoom. Attendees must register to receive Zoom information.

Mary Raafat Mikhail Bishai, Ph.D.
Experimental Particle Physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory

Honored for enduring contributions at the intensity frontier of high energy physics in unraveling fundamental properties of neutrinos, extraordinary leadership and service to the particle physics community, and deep commitment to broadening participation through mentoring next generation scientists.

Lecture: Jan. 14, 2025, from 1:30-3 p.m. ET
Register to attend virtually

Mary Bishai is currently an experimental particle physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York. She received her Ph.D. in high energy physics from Purdue University in 1999 and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1991. Bishai's research is in the field of high energy and particle physics with a particular emphasis on the physics of neutrinos and heavy quarks. From 2012 to 2015, Bishai served as the project scientist for the Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE), which lead to the formation of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) in 2015. DUNE is a leading-edge, international experiment for neutrino science and proton decay studies currently under construction in the U.S. In 2023, Dr. Bishai was elected co-spokesperson of the DUNE international scientific collaboration, representing over 1,400 researchers from 36 countries and over 200 institutions.  Bishai has been a scientific collaborator on many leading particle physics experiments including the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment, the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search, the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF II), and the CLEO experiment. Bishai is co-author of over 400 publications and played a leading role in several of the most highly cited publications in the last two decades, including the publication on the production of charmonium and b-quarks at CDF II, which has garnered over 1,000 citations and the observation of muon neutrino disappearance from the NuMI beamline (900+ citations). Bishai was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2014 for her contributions to neutrino science and understanding of the b-quark and received the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics as a member of the Daya Bay collaboration.

Bishai is committed to the development of a diverse and inclusive scientific workforce. She has mentored over 15 undergraduate interns through the DOE Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships program as well as six high school student interns through the High School Research program at Brookhaven Lab. She is an active member and supporter of the African School of Fundamental Physics and Applications (ASP) and has mentored several ASP alumni who have been accepted into Ph.D. programs in the U.S. and Europe.

Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit science.energy.gov.

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