The Lamarr Institute congratulates Dr. Leonora Kardum on receiving the prestigious “Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Promotion Prize” for her outstanding achievements in the field of astroparticle physics. Dr. Kardum has expanded the boundaries of our understanding of neutrinos and tackled some of the most complex challenges in this research area.
Measurements in astroparticle physics are particularly demanding, as they require three analytical steps:
- The relevant data must be filtered from the vast amounts recorded by telescopes (signal-background separation).
- The optimal functional relationship between the data and the physical question needs to be identified (feature selection).
- The inverse problem must be solved to translate measurements into physical quantities.
Dr. Kardum has made remarkable strides by successfully solving the unfolding problem for measuring the energy spectrum of neutrinos from atmospheric and astrophysical sources with unprecedented accuracy. Her groundbreaking work not only advances our understanding of neutrino astronomy but also sets new standards for precision in this research area. To achieve these significant results, she developed innovative machine learning methods during her time at SFB 876 and later at the Lamarr Institute. She was awarded for her dissertation “Unfolding the muon neutrino flux”.