India Bhalla-Ladd, Timothy Dwight '21
On women, physics, philosophy & Beyond.
By Lena Chan
India’s passion for physics and the pivotal role that women play within the field emerges the moment we sit for her interview. A junior who hails from Washington, D.C. and now resides in Timothy Dwight college (a statement that I, as her current suitemate, am especially thrilled to write), she speaks about particle motion and branching ratios with the same ease that she complains about New England weather. India is no stranger to the joys and difficulties of specializing in a discipline primarily occupied by men. Regardless, her dedication to physics extends across campus—as the current president of Yale Women in Physics—and the international sphere—as a research assistant for the Lira Research Group at the Universidad de Chile, specializing in intermediate-mass black holes last year.
India is one of six students at Yale pursuing Physics and Philosophy, an interdisciplinary joint-major that she currently works to expand. Through relentless emails, meetings, and petitions, she is in the midst of persuading the Physics and Philosophy departments to allow undergraduates to also earn a bachelors of science within the major. When I ask India to explain how the disciplines complement and influence each other, she describes that both offer “a critical paradigm for looking at the world.” Amidst the humility with which she describes her work, India’s immense contribution to the diversity of study at Yale is apparent. The opportunity to earn a bachelors of science within Physics and Philosophy will open professional doors for aspiring researchers like India. By exploring both the scientific behavior of the universe and the ethics behind doing so, the joint-major promises to foster intersectional thought in the years to come.
India’s research experience is just as impressive as her contribution to interdisciplinary study at Yale. At the end of her sophomore year, she started her research in the Fermilab under Professor Sarah Demers of the Yale Physics department. Through Professor Demers, India found both an instructor and a mentor. Professor Demers currently serves as a faculty advisor for Women in Physics. She also invited India to join the Mu2e collaboration team in Batavia, Illinois this past summer.
The Mu2e team is an international collaboration seeking evidence for “charged-lepton flavor violation” (CLFV), a hypothesized phenomenon that may challenge fundamental principles of particle interaction. India explains that observing neutrino-less conversion of a muon into an electron clearly will demonstrate CLFV and offer unambiguous evidence for Physics beyond this “Standard Model.” Through the use of high-energy particle beams and accelerators unique to Illinois, India and her team plan to test numerous particle conversions in an attempt to observe this phenomenon. Within the larger Mu2e team, the Yale researchers manage the experiment’s Trigger, a software that collects and analyzes the energy, motion, and trajectory of particles. India specifically focused her summer efforts on improving one of the Trigger’s reconstruction algorithms to better distinguish important signal events from background noise.
For India, the future of Physics sees no end terminus. She plans to spend this upcoming summer in Geneva, Switzerland, continuing her research under Professor Demers at CERN (Conseil européen pour la recherche nucléaire). In Switzerland, India will join an international collaboration called ATLAS, where she will attempt to observe a particular decay of the elementary particle Higgs Boson and further test the “Standard Model.”
When I asked India what advice she could share with our readers, she offers the word “persistence.” She describes the difficulties she faced when first approaching Professor Demers to join the Fermilab. India sent email after email, and after not getting a response, mustered the courage to ask Professor Demers in person during her office hours. Professor Demers quickly apologized for her email etiquette (her inbox overflows with messages from hundreds of students and researchers across the world, after all), probed India’s interest in the hypothesized CLFV, and welcomed her into Fermilab.
Whether your interests lie in Physics, research, or beyond, India’s perseverance offers a valuable lesson for us all. As terrifying as it may appear, discomfort often invites opportunity. Had India not wandered into Professor Demers’ office hours, she may have never formed such strong bonds with a mentor who understands and has repeatedly defied the obstacles that often dissuade women from entering Physics. She may have never met the other three Yale undergraduates who joined her in Illinois and later formed her Physics family, bickering over chores, groceries, and the fundamental principles of quantum Physics. She may have sidestepped the opportunity to venture into the unexplored field of “new Physics” in Chicago, Geneva, and beyond. Sometimes, all it takes is an initial question, a cold email, or—in India’s case—a nervous conversation after class.