(Jul. 4) - "The results released today by Atlas and CMS experiments at the CERN are an important step forward to understand the universe and show how the high energy physics can be exciting, useful and necessary for development". So said in a note Fernando Ferroni, President of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics, commenting on the discovery of the Higgs boson at the CERN in Geneva, highlighting that it is "the culmination of a four-decades research to prove the validity of the theory known as the Standard Model of particle physics.” This important discovery has been possible with a tangible contribution from Italy, through the efforts of Daniela Bortoletto, professor at Purdue University and also member of the team working on the CMS experiment at Geneva, Sergio Bertolucci, CERN Research Director, and Fabiola Giannotti, in charge of the Atlas experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. Italy has contributed with 480 million euros to the construction of the LHC: big number representing one of the best investment made by Italy in scientific and industrial research. (red)

ABOUT DANIELA BORTOLETTO
Daniela Bortoletto graduated in Physics from the University of Pavia, Italy, in 1982. Right after she earned her MA (1986) and PhD (1989) from Syracuse University. In 1989 she joined the Purdue University as a Postdoctoral Research Associate and, after being Assistant and Associate Professor, she became Full Professor in 2001. She is currently Distinguished Professor of Physics at Purdue. Her current research interests: experimental Particle Physics at CDF with focus on searches for the standard model Higgs and particles expected in beyond the standard model theories; silicon pixel detectors for CMS, the SLHC, and the linear collider; study of WW production and Drell-Yan at the LHC with the CMS detector.