Sarah Demers

Sarah Demers is an American physicist and the Horace D. Taft associate professor of physics at Yale University.

Sarah Demers
Other names	Sarah Marie Demers Konezny
Alma mater	Harvard University University of Rochester
Scientific career
Institutions	Roberts Wesleyan University CERN Yale University
Thesis	A measurement of BR(t -->[tau nuq)] (2004)
Doctoral advisor	Kevin McFarland

Early life and education

Demers graduated from Phillips Andover Academy in 1994.^[1] Demers has an A.B. in Physics from Harvard University (1999).^[2] In 2001 she received an M.A. from the University of Rochester,^[3] and in 2005 she earned her Ph.D. from the University of Rochester.^[4] At Rochester, her doctoral advisor was Kevin McFarland.^[5]

She taught at Roberts Wesleyan University before accepting a postdoctoral position during which time she worked in Geneva at CERN. In 2009 she moved to Yale University where, as of 2022, she is the Horace D. Taft associate professor of physics at Yale University.^[6][7]

At Yale, Demers co-teaches a class at Yale on the Physics of Dance with fellow professor Emily Coates,^[8] and Demers appears in Coates' 2015 show 'Incarnations'.^[9]

Research

Demers is a particle physicist. As an undergraduate she worked in the laboratory of Melissa Franklin^[2] and made sheets of gold-coated Mylar into detectors for tracking elemental particles.^[10] Her work examines charged particles to find new methods in physics beyond the accepted Standard Model.^[11] Demers was part of the team who discovered the Higgs boson,^[12] and her work is conducted at the Large Hadron Collider.^[13] Demers also works on the ATLAS experiment and the Mu2e experiments.^[3]

Selected publications

• Coates, Emily; Demers, Sarah (2019). Physics and dance. New Haven. ISBN 978-0-300-24063-4. OCLC 1076873286.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)^[14]
• Particle Data Group; Workman, R L; Burkert, V D; Crede, V; Klempt, E; Thoma, U; Tiator, L; Agashe, K; Aielli, G; Allanach, B C; Amsler, C; Antonelli, M; Aschenauer, E C; Asner, D M; Baer, H (2022-08-08). "Review of Particle Physics". Progress of Theoretical and Experimental Physics. 2022 (8): 083C01. doi:10.1093/ptep/ptac097. hdl:20.500.11850/571164. ISSN 2050-3911.
• Atlas Collaboration (2012-06-26). "Search for the Standard Model Higgs boson in the H → τ + τ − decay mode in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with ATLAS". Journal of High Energy Physics. 2012 (9). arXiv:1206.5971v1. doi:10.1007/JHEP09(2012)070. S2CID 256011890.

Awards and honors

In 2011 Demers received an early career award from the United States' Department of Energy.^[15]

She was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2023, "for important contributions to tau lepton triggering and identification and using the tau signature in the study of Higgs production and decay, and for important leadership both within the ATLAS collaboration and the broader physics community".^[16]