iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Fresh off the press: next year there will be another CERN open day: 24, 25 and 26 September 2027 ! (pic: a group I took to visit the CMS detector at one of the collision points of the large hadron collider. For CMS visits, guides have a white helmet, visitors in orange, or sometimes blue)

190

Reposted by Freya Blekman

CMS Experiment at CERN @cmsexperiment.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Tae-Jeong Kim has joined Florencia Canelli as Deputy Spokesperson, working with Anadi Canepa as Spokesperon for the CMS Collaboration for 2026-2028. The collaboration thanks outgoing Deputy Spokesperson, Hafeez Hoorani, for representing CMS from 2024-2026. Learn more: cms.cern/index.php/ne...

082

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

This week I'm in sunny Graz in Austria, speaking about Higgs bosons and why we need a future collider to measure them properly, presenting a so-called mini-colloquium . It's at the 75th Annual Meeting of the Austrian Physical Society, good times will be had. I've never been to #Graz, any tips?

030

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Excellent science communication by our summer students www.instagram.com/reel/DdTH7ra...

010

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

So many historic science objects on our campus in #hamburg This time: a van de Graaff generator! #hamburg #wisskomm #particlephysics #accelerator #science

2154

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

My colleague Anna Benecke is hiring a PhD student in the context starting her DESY group. More details here: inspirehep.net/jobs/3195484

020

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

If you are in the Hamburg area: My colleagues Christian Schwanenberger and Beate Heinemann are taking part in this interesting #STEAM event: ndkh.de/kirchen/?chu...

poster of Gloria Bruni's opera "Schöpfung Fragmente"

Panel discussion titled "Glaube trifft Wissenschaft" with speakers Prof. Dr. Beate Heinemann, Prof. Bazon Brock, and composer Gloria Bruni; Saturday, 12 September at 19:00, Blankeneser Kirche am Markt, shown on a maroon event poster.

130

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Some exciting #darkmatter #physics news from a mine in South Dakota. But no Nobel prizes any time soon. I explain why in this a bit longer explanation video

183

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Conferences are an important part of the academic calendar, it is where we discuss the latest and greatest, and where we make strategy for the future. Here is a short video about the #ICHEP2026 conference, that a few of my colleagues and I attended last month www.instagram.com/reel/DcvuZso...

000

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Every layer of a Dolly Parton outfit had a job: structure, sparkle, warmth, all of it in service of the show. Particle detectors are built the same way, layer after layer, each tuned for a different job, working together to catch what matters. Thank you #DollyParton for the sparkle and the song

080

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

040

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

050

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I am a scientist working at CERN. If you have questions, I can answer them. Honestly. But beware, I will also call 🐄 💩 (and why)

091

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

071

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Ambitious #science and definitely particle physics are almost always a #team effort. This is also true for conferences. Here you see Pedro (Portugal), Azwinndini (South Africa), Kate (UK), Sandra (Brazil), and friends, together we presently are organising a track at the #ichep2026 conference

050

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

A connection of mine is editing a book on Science and Sustainability. They need more data on views by early career scientists so made a survey. In case you are an ecr and this interests you, please complete the survey at forms.gle/K5AJSbuCsKdR... #sustainability #science #earlycareerscientists

forms.gle

Sustainability research

Survey of Attitudes and Commitments. The purpose of this survey is to gauge public perception of sustainable development concepts.

022

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

This week I’m at a conference. Physics conferences have of course talks about physics, but about much more! For example this morning, I gave a talk about how we run our group Instagram account (and why we do it that way) #ichep2026 particle physics is #openscience so talk is here: indi.to/vjPHb

040

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

This time in random gear I found on campus: the monochromator You’ve probably seen a prism split light into a rainbow. X-rays can be split the same way with a crystal monochromator instead of glass. The antique monochromator in this video is a real piece of that history.

021

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Very important work that falls between instrumentation and analysis is what often makes the difference in physics reach 🔥 keep up the good work Kuan!

150

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

There are 2 postdoctoral positions opening in the CMS group at DESY, more details here: lnkd.in/evBjrzkt (yes they are in my group) Please don't hesitate to forward this job announcement to suitable candidates.

022

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

Very nice scicomm of one of the recent papers in my group. We checked how the interplay between different collisions energies at future colliders (and which energy/amount of data is best) can help to find, or constrain, axion-like particles.

instagram.com

Particle physics by CMS experiment at DESY (@cmsatdesy) • Instagram photos and videos

67 likes, 3 comments - cmsatdesy on June 23, 2026: "What if a new particle showed up as three photons? Axion-like particles, or ALPs, are hypothetical particles that appear in many extensions of the Standard...

020

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

And quite a lot of nice UHH results there!

040

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

This really nice result has a link to Germany and DESY: one of the leading authors (Sapta Bhattacharya, now professor on ATLAS, in the USA) did this work as a #HumboldtResearchFellow in our group

033

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Whoo hoo our team (team “lucky number 13”) made it into the photo collage 😎

020

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

We are celebrating the renewal of our #hamburg #clusterofexcellence #quantumuniverse. With science. And art! And singing physicists !

131

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

I love speaking at festivals! Today at Kimiko festival in Aachen. First time the CERN festival programme touches down in Germany 🇩🇪

Freya next to a neon sign that reads: science is magic that works

0140

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Ready for some mud and physics at the @kimikofestival as part of the #bigbangcollective. I’m wearing a particularly obscure festival t-shirt. Because I can 👌

Selfie. In a raincoat so you can’t see the obscure festival t shirt. It’s from ATP, for those in the know

060

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

How quarks cluster together into hadrons is only partially understood. With heavy quarks it is easier to calculate and measuring bound bottom quark-antiquark pairs is therefor super important to understand this aspect of the strong force. This #CMSPaper measures the Upsilon particles buff.ly/p5QZ00p

Beautiful upsilon peaks. As said, the only difference is how the b-quarks are configured inside the particle

030

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Top quarks are usually produced in quark-antiquark pairs, but through the weak interaction, it is possible to create single top quarks too. This #CMSPaper measures one of the single top quark production modes, and provides important input to measure and understand quantum fluctuations inside protons

probability (we call that cross section) of the production of single top quark in the t-channel, as a function of collision energy

130

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

There are many predictions for undiscovered particles that are similar to the Higgs particle. This #CMSPaper looks for the double whammy: two different undiscovered Higgs-like particles! It is the first time this was done. We didn't see anything but also used limited data arxiv.org/abs/2602.00273

checking for a peak. No significant peaks here.

030

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

The LHC colllides protons, and protons contain quarks (and gluons). Almost all collisions involve only one quark (or gluon) from each proton, but the super-rare collisions where two particles in the one proton collide simultaneously with two particles in another proton arxiv.org/abs/2602.02770

Y meson and Z boson peaks involved in the selection of these collisions

000

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

A DESY scientist walks into a music festival.. not a joke! On Friday, 12 June, I'll be at the CERN Science Hub at @kimikofestival! . Kein Vorwissen nötig. Nur Neugier. / No prior knowledge needed. Just curiosity. kimiko-festival.de/science-tech/

020

Reposted by Freya Blekman

CERN @cern.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Join scientists, live from the CERN Control Centre, as the Large Hadron Collider (#LHC) delivers its last collisions to its experiments before it is transformed into a high luminosity machine. #HiLumiLHC 📍LIVE on Facebook & YouTube 📆 11 June, 5:00 PM CEST 🔗 youtube.com/live/oVwzDcj...

youtube.com

LIVE LHC Season Finale, up next...

YouTube video by CERN

18328

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

This is a big one: the #CMSPaper summarising all precise Higgs boson measurements on data collected in 2016, 2017 and 2018. We agree with the standard model prediction for the total number of Higgs bosons, within 5-6% those are still big uncertainties for particle physics) arxiv.org/abs/2602.18611

Higgs-y summary plot. It compares whether the Higgs particle indeed interacts more strongly with particles depending on the particle mass. If the dat is on the red diagonal line, it agrees with the standard model prediction

580

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

A DESY scientist walks into a music festival.. not a joke! On Friday, 12 June, I'll be at the CERN Science Hub at @kimikofestival talking Am Freitag, 12. Juni bin ich im CERN Science Hub beim @kimikofestival und spreche über die kleinsten Bausteine und die großen Fragen, die sie aufwerfen.

221

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Guess what… today I’m on a train again, from Hamburg to Geneva as next week is CMS collaboration week. (More about that next week). But noteworthy of my 11 hour trans-European train trip today is that DEUTSCHE BAHN IS RUNNING AHEAD OF SCHEDULE. 10 min even. yes very exciting. Hence the all caps.

Train sign. The train is 10 minutes early.

170

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Most 2026 insult ever to a man tone policer: if you are that sensitive I can install an ai agent especially for you, making sure it translates everything to the way one talks to a little child. good bot and happy manchild?

270

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

Tonight (well hopefully soon) I am taking the sleeper train from Stockholm to Hamburg. It is not starting well. We are already delayed even before departing. Something about one of the cars not completely working #trains

Selfie of Freya and the train. The train is very much standing still

290

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

You have another chance to see the (may I say: excellent!) science-related short films on the walls of the Science City Hamburg Bahrenfeld campus (aka DESY/UHH campus) on 5 June. #AWallIsAScreen after all awallisascreen.com And yes, there will also be science! On walls :)

051

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Imposter syndrome doesn’t mean you don’t belong. It often means the opposite, that you care deeply about what you do. I asked my colleagues to join me, because many of the most accomplished, world-leading scientists have felt like “frauds” at times. #academia #impostersyndrome #physics

060

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

To accurately reconstruct all particles in LHC collision, CMS uses a technique called "Particle Flow". This #CMSPaper shows how the newest, #machinelearning based particle flow algorithm performs in recent data and how well it does at rejecting extra uninteresting collisions arxiv.org/abs/2601.17554

measuring missing energy relies on precisely measuring every particle in the collision, and here you see how well the ML does

080

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

This #CMSPaper measures interactions between photons and Z bosons (quantum particles of electromagnetism and weak force). And measures if there are effects that explain why our universe contains more matter than antimatter. It's the most sensitive result for that signature arxiv.org/abs/2601.14102

the standard model cannot explain why there is more matter than antimatter. And this result agrees with the standard model, which is why the little cross is inside the big yellow ellipse

040

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

If you are a theoretical physicist this might be of interest: Theory Hub for Future Circular Collider e+e- Physics indico.mitp.uni-mainz.de/event/471/ I’m particularly impressed with the support by the German funding agency:if you work in theory in Germany this workshop is paid for you!

indico.mitp.uni-mainz.de

Rundgespräch: Theory Hub for Future Circular Collider e+e- Physics

We will host a round-table discussion for the preparation of a DFG Priority Programme submission to establish a "Theory Hub for Future Circular Collider e+e- Physics" at the Helmholtz Institute Mainz…

060

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

This week I am in #stockholm at the #cometa @multibosons European research network. Yesterday I gave a talk for the general public about the large hadron collider, particle physics and the Nobel prize (and I gave a talk for scientists today).

0100

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Experiments like CMS need algorithms called a trigger to decide which of the ~ 1 in 1000 events they want to keep (the other 999 are thrown away). This #CMSPaper describes the #machinelearning that is needed to do that for tau leptons arxiv.org/abs/2602.11359

performance of the tau trigger, and comparison between data and simulation

060

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

051

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

140

Freya Blekman @freyablekman.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

050