Speaker Bio

Andrea Delgado joined ORNL as a Distinguished Staff Fellow in 2020 and is currently an R&D Associate in the Physics Division. Her background is in experimental high-energy physics with solid research and development (R&D) focus on analyzing big data produced by large-scale particle physics experiments.

Dr. Delgado earned her Ph.D. (2020) from Texas A&M University. Her dissertation focused on proving/disproving the existence of a particle not contained in the standard model of particle physics through the analysis of data collected by the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Switzerland. Before ORNL, she worked as a graduate research assistant at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory as part of the US-CMS Collaboration under the support of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). Dr. Delgado was also the recipient of the National GEM Consortium Fellowship.

At ORNL, Dr. Delgado’s interdisciplinary research is focused on the intersection of quantum computing and particle physics. Her work combines a scientific interest in extending our knowledge of the fundamental blocks of the universe and how they interact with each other and building better tools to analyze the data from quantum sensing experiments for dark matter detection, as well as quantum machine learning applications with a particular interest in quantum generative models.

Dr. Delgado is committed to diversity and inclusion in the STEM field and has served as a chair of the Women in Physical Sciences employee resource group. She is also the PI of a DOE RENEW award to fund a traineeship program to diversify the pipeline for the next generation of high-energy physicists. De. Delgado is currently a member of the American Physical Society and has served as the Early Career Executive Committee member at the Nuclear Physics Unit from 2022-2023.