Heidi Schellman

Schellman was born in 1957 in Hennepin, Minnesota, the daughter of two chemists. Her father, John Anthony Schellman, who trained at Princeton, was a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Oregon; he was an early member of the "groundbreaking Institute of Molecular Biology"[1] and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.[2] Her mother, F. Charlotte Green, held a Ph.D. in chemistry from Stanford and had also worked at the California Institute of Technology. They married in 1954 while they were both postdoctoral fellows at the Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen, Denmark.[3] At the University of Oregon, both her parents "were known for advancing the study of protein structure, folding and stability through techniques such as circular dichroism spectroscopy".[4]

Heidi Schellman graduated from South Eugene High School in Eugene, Oregon, in 1975.[5] She earned a B.S. in mathematics in 1977 from Stanford University and an M.S. and Ph.D. in physics by 1984 from the University of California, Berkeley.[2][6]

Shellman married physicist Stephen A. Wolbers in 1983.[7]

Shellman began her career as a programmer at the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC),[8] where she learned "she liked the mixture of theory and practice in experimental physics. She describes her love of physics succinctly: 'Physicists get to build things!' ".[8]

Prior to joining the OSU faculty in 2015, she held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Chicago and Fermilab, and was on the faculty of Northwestern University,[9] where she was chair of the physics and astronomy programs at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.[8]

In 2015, Schellman was elected vice chair of the Commission on Particles and Fields within the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.[10]

Schellman's research interests include, "future high-intensity neutrino experiments and the relation between cosmology and high-energy physics".[11] She has collaborated on D-Zero and Tevatron experiments at Fermilab, researching the mass of top quarks and interactions of protons and anti-protons, and has extensively studied quantum chromodynamics perturbation theory.[9]

Schellman was an A.P. Sloan Research Fellow and a Department of Energy Outstanding Junior Investigator. She was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1999, cited for "her leadership in QCD physics and as spokesperson of E-665, the Tevatron muon scattering experiment".[6][12] She was awarded the 2015 Mentoring Award by the American Physical Society’s Division of Particles and Fields.[10]

• Physicists hunt for hidden particles: NPR, October 13, 2009. (audio, 12:28 minutes)
• Heidi Schellman, From a Physicist's Mind, Helix, Northwestern University, November 30, 2008.