Mary Bishai

Bishai was born to a family of engineers. Her father had a PhD in electrical engineering and her grandfather was a science teacher.^[2] She grew up in Nigeria and Egypt and is of Egyptian descent.^[2][3] In 1985, she read a National Geographic magazine about particle physics experiments taking place at CERN, and decided that was what she wanted to work on.^[2] She was an undergraduate student in physics at University of Colorado Boulder, then moved to Purdue University for graduate studies,^[1] where she worked on the CLEO experiment at Cornell University.^[2] She worked on parity violations in the decays of charm-strange baryons.^[2] She was awarded the Purdue University George W. Tautfest Award, an award that honors outstanding physics graduate students.^[4]

In 1998, Bishai joined Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory as a research associate, where she was involved with Tevatron.^[5] She worked on quantum chromodynamics.^[6]

Bishai joined Brookhaven National Laboratory in 2004. She was hired to work on the MINOS experiment, a long baseline neutrino project.^[5][7] Her recommendations enabled the CD-0 decision from the United States Department of Energy (DOE) that enabled the Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment.^{[citation needed]} She was part of the team who measured the J/psi meson cross sections at the Collider Detector at Fermilab.^[8] Her role as Project Scientist for the LBNE from 2012 to 2015 contributed to the formation of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) in 2015.^[5]

Dr. Bishai also contributes as a mentor, committed to guiding young scientists in the field. This includes mentoring over 15 undergraduate students through the DOE-funded Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship program and 5 high school student interns through the High School Research Program, both hosted by Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL).^[5][9] Additionally, she has mentored students who visited Brookhaven as part of the African School of Physics program.^[5]