Sridhara Dasu

Sridhara Rao Dasu (born 1961) is an Indian-born American particle physicist and academic. He is a professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and has participated in CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. His research focuses on experimental particle physics, including tests of the Standard Model, studies of the Higgs boson, and searches for dark matter.

Dasu has contributed to the development of detector instrumentation and computing infrastructure used in modern collider experiments. He served as chair of the Department of Physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 2017 to 2021. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Early life and education

Dasu was born in Hyderabad, India. He completed a Bachelor of Science degree at Nizam College, part of Osmania University, in 1981 and obtained a Master of Science in physics from the University of Hyderabad in 1983.

He moved to the United States for graduate study and received a PhD in physics from the University of Rochester in 1988. His doctoral research, supervised by physicist Arie Bodek, focused on deep inelastic scattering experiments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) that investigated the internal structure of the proton.

Career

After completing his doctorate, Dasu worked as a research associate at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center from 1988 to 1992.

In 1992, he joined the University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of Physics as a scientist. He was appointed assistant professor (2000–2005), associate professor (2006–2009), and full professor in 2010. He served as chair of the department from 2017 to 2021 and has held visiting and adjunct appointments, including as an adjunct professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai from 2016 to 2019.

Research

Dasu’s research is in experimental particle physics and focuses on testing the Standard Model and searching for phenomena beyond it using particle accelerators.

Proton structure and early experiments

His early work involved deep inelastic scattering experiments probing the internal structure of the proton. These experiments measured how quarks and gluons carry momentum within the proton and helped refine theoretical descriptions of quantum chromodynamics. He contributed to experiments at SLAC and HERA at DESY.

BaBar experiment and CP violation

Dasu later participated in the BaBar experiment at SLAC, which studied B mesons produced in electron–positron collisions. The experiment examined CP violation, an asymmetry between matter and antimatter.

Research within the BaBar collaboration tested Standard Model predictions on quark mixing and rare particle decays.

CMS experiment and Higgs boson physics

Dasu has been involved in the CMS experiment at CERN, contributing to measurements of electroweak processes and studies of the Higgs boson, including analyses of its decay channels. He has also taken part in searches for new physics, including dark matter, at the Large Hadron Collider.

Detector instrumentation and computing

Within CMS, he has served as manager of the Level-1 calorimeter trigger system, which selects events of interest from high collision rates.

Scientific service

Dasu served as deputy chair and secretary of the Collaboration Board and as chair of the U.S. CMS collaboration. He also managed components of the detector trigger system and was principal investigator for CMS-related grants at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

He has served on the Fermilab Users Executive Committee, the SLAC Users Organization Executive Committee, and as a U.S. representative to the International Committee for Future Accelerators.

Awards and honors

• Fellow of the American Physical Society (2012)
• Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics with the LHC collaboration (2025)

Selected publications

• CMS Collaboration (2012). "Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC." Physics Letters B. 716 (1): 30–61.
• CMS Collaboration (2013). "Observation of a new boson with mass near 125 GeV in pp collisions at √s = 7 and 8 TeV." Journal of High Energy Physics.
• CMS Collaboration (2014). "Evidence for the direct decay of the 125 GeV Higgs boson to fermions." Physical Review Letters.
• CMS Collaboration (2018). "Observation of the Higgs boson decay to a pair of tau leptons." Physics Letters B.
• BaBar Collaboration (2001). "Observation of CP violation in the B0 meson system." Physical Review Letters.