Ayana Holloway Arce facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ayana Holloway Arce
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Arce in 2017
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| Alma mater | Harvard University Princeton University |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Duke University Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory |
Ayana Tamu Arce (born Holloway) is an American physicist and a professor at Duke University. She studies tiny particles and how they behave. She uses information from a huge science machine called the Large Hadron Collider to learn more about the universe.
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Early Life and Education
Ayana Arce was born in Lansing, Michigan. She loved science and went to Princeton University to study physics. She earned her first degree with honors in 1998.
Later, she went to Harvard University for her PhD, which is a very advanced degree. For her research, she worked at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, using a special detector to study particles. She finished her PhD in 2006.
Family Connections
Ayana Arce comes from a family of smart people! Her mother, Karla, is also a professor at Duke University. She teaches English and studies African American culture. Ayana's father, Russell Holloway, is a computer scientist and helps connect the Pratt School of Engineering with companies.
Discovering the Universe
After getting her PhD, Dr. Arce worked at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. There, she learned special ways to measure and understand heavy, unstable particles. These are particles that exist for only a very short time.
In 2010, Dr. Arce joined Duke University as a professor. She works on a big experiment called ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. She helps build and use parts of the detector called a calorimeter, which measures the energy of particles. Her work helps scientists understand how particles called "jets" are formed and how they can be used to find new types of particles.
Inspiring Future Scientists
Dr. Arce is passionate about encouraging more people, especially people of color, to get involved in science. In 2017, she and her mother were part of a special event at Duke University celebrating Black professors.
She was very excited by the movie Hidden Figures, which tells the story of amazing Black women who worked as mathematicians for NASA. Dr. Arce has joined discussions across the country about how to help more students from diverse backgrounds become scientists. She also helps with a program called the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory. This program gives college students a chance to do summer research in nuclear and particle physics.
See also
In Spanish: Ayana Holloway Arce para niños
