Asimina Arvanitaki

Asimina Arvanitaki is the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Aristarchus Chair in Theoretical Physics at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. She joined the institute in 2014 and is the first woman to hold a named chair position there.

Her research focuses on the precision frontier of theoretical physics, developing novel experimental approaches to detect phenomena predicted by theoretical models. Key areas include dark matter detection using gravitational wave observatories, axion physics through black hole merger analysis, and particle physics at the TeV scale. She has pioneered methods to detect dark matter as matter waves using conventional gravitational wave detectors and proposed using neutrino and gamma-ray telescopes like Fermi, HESS, and IceCube to search for dark matter decay products.

Her publications demonstrate consistent focus on bridging theoretical predictions with experimental verification, particularly in dark matter detection and gravitational wave astronomy. The research trend shows increasing sophistication in leveraging existing observational infrastructure for novel physics discoveries.

• New Horizons in Physics prize (2017)

Arvanitaki pursued post-doctoral research at Stanford University before joining Perimeter Institute. Her strategic naming of the Aristarchus Chair honors both her Greek heritage and the ancient astronomer who first proposed heliocentrism, reflecting the cosmological scope of her research.