Sarah Demers named the Taft Associate Professor of Physics

Sarah Demers, newly named as the Horace D. Taft Associate Professor of Physics, focuses her research on using tau leptons to probe for and characterize physics beyond the standard model at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. The appointment is effective through June 30, 2019.

Demers’ current projects include the search for a Higgs boson that decays to tau pairs and a measure of tau polarization in Z boson decays. In addition, she works on the trigger for the experiment and co-leads the ATLAS Data Quality Group.

Demers gives talks explaining the Higgs Boson and other physics topics to high school students and teachers, undergraduates, and alumni groups. She is co-founder of the Yale Franke and Whitney Humanities Center group “Interdisciplinary Arts and Science Research” with theater studies lecturer and director of the dance studies curriculum Emily Coates. She also collaborates with Coates on a project that bridges physics and dance, and they are co-writing a coursebook on the subject.

After receiving her A.B. from Harvard University, Demers attended the University of Rochester where she was awarded her M.A. and Ph.D. in physics. She taught at Roberts Wesleyan College and served as a research associate at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University before joining the Yale faculty in 2009 as assistant professor of physics. At Yale, she currently teaches “Introductory Physics for the Life Sciences.”

The Yale professor has over 400 publications in professional journals. She has lectured at conferences in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and Australia, among others. Her honors include a Yale Provost Teaching Award, a U.S. Atlas fellowship, a Yale University and New Haven Seton Elm-Ivy Award, and a Department of Energy Early Career Award.