Dr. Sampa Bhadra, a York University physics professor, is part of Tokai to Kamioka (T2K) team that won the prestigious 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.
The prize is meant to “recognize those individuals who have made profound contributions to human knowledge,” according to the website, and includes a reward of $3 million.
The team won the prize for “for the fundamental discovery of neutrino oscillations, revealing a new frontier beyond, and possibly far beyond, the standard model of particle physics.”
However, working with a team of 1,370 other scientists, she admits she won’t see a large chunk of the $3 million prize—but is excited to have been part of such a discovery. “it will be a pretty good dinner and maybe I can celebrate with some of my other colleagues!” Dr. Bhadra says. “I am lucky to be working on neutrino physics at a time when several experiments, including our T2K experiment, have made critical discoveries within a relatively short time period.”
While Dr. Bhadra says that this technology is possible to apply to photosensor technology, as with most scientific breakthroughs, it’s hard to tell whether this discovery will be integral to others in the future. “In science there is often a time lag between new technology and widespread application,” explained Dr. Bhadra.