Farida Fassi was elected as an AAS Fellow in 2020. As a fellow, Farida Fassi contributes to the development of the Academy's strategic direction through participation in AAS activities and governance structures. This gears the Academy's vision of transforming African lives through science.
Dr. Farida Fassi is a Professor of Mohammed V University in Rabat at the Faculty of Science. In 1996, after completing her BSc in physics from Abdelmalek Essaâd University in Morocco, she went to Spain to continue Higher Education. In 1999, she obtained her MSc from the University of Valencia in Spain. After MSc, she earned her Ph.D. In 2003, she awarded the European Ph.D. in particle physics in recognition of her contribution in the ATLAS experiment at CERN. She then granted with a post-doc from CSIC to continue working on the ATLAS experiment. In 2007, she elected for an Advance Research fellowship offered by CNRS to work in the CMS experiment at “Institut de physique nucléaire de Lyon” (IPNL) and CCIN2P3 in France. She was the French´s Tier-1 contact person at CERN and research scientist at IPNL. She worked through several research positions at CSIC and the Spanish Center for Particle, Astroparticle and Nuclear Physics. She contributed in the LHC experiments, ATLAS and CMS, that led to the major scientific discovery of the 21th century; the Higgs Boson. Since 2013, she is the Distributed Analysis Support coordinator for the ATLAS experiment. She also has a pivotal role in the Exotic Top and Higgs physics working groups at the ATLAS collaboration. She is Linked Doctor at CSIC and visiting scientist at IFIC. Her research interests lie generally at connecting theoretical particle physics with experimental results, focusing on the search for new phenomena and investigating the Dark Matter nature. She is co-founder of the “African Strategy for Fundamental and Applied Physics”. Her aspiration is to set up the foundation and framework to ensure structured growth, learning culture and draw the participation of African Physicists in defining the most impactful physics priorities for Africa.
