When a scientific publisher pulled together top research led by female physicists, Sara Pozzi, a professor of nuclear engineering and radiological sciences, was honored and humbled to find one of her papers on the list. Elsevier published a virtual issue to celebrate women in physics for International Women’s Day on March 8th.

“There are many scientists that I admire on that list,” said Pozzi. “For example, Fabiola Gianotti is the director of CERN, the European research center where the Higgs boson was discovered.” The Higgs boson, a particle that is thought to make matter substantial rather than massless, was the 2013 Nobel Prize-winning discovery in physics.

Pozzi’s paper in the virtual issue improved on a standard simulation code used to model how a radiation source appears in a detector. “I am excited to see that researchers around the world are using the concepts that we first introduced in this paper and are making use of those findings. I am optimistic that these developments will help make the world safer,” said Pozzi.

Pozzi leads the Consortium for Verification Technology, a $25 million effort that develops technologies and practices to ensure that countries signed on to nuclear treaties are upholding their responsibilities.