Interview with Fabiola Gianotti

We were thrilled to welcome Fabiola Gianotti to Edinburgh for the Higgs Lecture 2026. Before her talk, we invited our students and staff to submit their questions for her, and we conducted this short interview. In this video, she shared insights from her career at CERN, reflects on the discovery of the Higgs boson, and offers advice for the next generation of physicists. Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics: Based at the University of Edinburgh, the Higgs Centre brings together researchers working to answer some of the most fundamental questions about our universe. Each year, the Higgs Lecture invites a leading physicist to share the latest breakthroughs in the field. Further information about the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics: https://higgs.ph.ed.ac.uk/ Fabiola Gianotti and CERN: Fabiola Gianotti served as Director-General of CERN from 2016-2025, becoming both the first woman in the role and the first to serve two full terms. She joined CERN as a research physicist in 1994 and later led the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. During this time, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations announced the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012—one of the most significant breakthroughs in modern physics.