Prize Recipient

Cristian Xavier Baldenegro Barrera
Laboratoire Leprince-Ringuet, École Polytechnique

"For outstanding work on the measurement of strongly interacting color-singlet and photon exchange in proton-proton collisions at the LHC and development of the Forward Physics Monte Carlo (FPMC) generator."

Cristian Baldenegro Barrera earned his B.S. in Physics from Universidad de Sonora in Mexico in 2015 and his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Kansas in 2021 under the direction of Prof. Christophe Royon. His doctoral research was in experimental high energy physics, where he worked with the CMS and TOTEM experiments, both of which are located at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. For his doctoral thesis, Cristian analyzed data collected by the CMS and TOTEM experiments to study the production of jets, collimated sprays of particles, to better understand the emergent properties of the strong force at high-energies predicted by quantum chromodynamics calculations. In addition to this, Cristian benchmarked the sensitivity to physics beyond the Standard Model in two-photon fusion processes using the intact proton technique, for example the scattering of light-by-light mediated by axion-like particles or pure quartic gauge boson interactions. After earning his Ph.D. degree, he transitioned to working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratoire Leprince-Ringuet at the École Polytechnique in Paris, France, where he continues to contribute to the CMS Collaboration by analyzing the substructure of highly energetic jets in proton-proton collisions and in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions, as well as convening the forward and ultraperipheral collisions working team of the CMS heavy-ion group.