Dr. Irene Valenzuela

Welcome!

I am a theoretical physicist currently working both as a staff member at CERN and UAM/IFT.

In this website I provide some information about my research interests, CV and contact details. I hope you find it useful!

About me

I am currently a staff member of the Theory Deparment at CERN. I also have a position as distinguished researcher at IFT UAM/CSIC in Madrid (Spain). I am the PI of an ERC Starting Grant and an ATRAE Spanish Grant.

Before, I worked at Harvard University, Cornell University, Uthrecht University and the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich. I did my PhD at the IFT in Madrid with Prof. Luis Ibanez.

My research interests include string theory, theoretical cosmology and particle physics. I work on the Swampland program, to determine the costrains that quantum gravity imposes at low energies.

Research

My research focuses on the intersection between String Theory, Cosmology and Particle Physics.
I am very interested in the constraints that an effective quantum field theory must satisfy to be embedded in a consistent theory of quantum gravity. This has led me to work on the Swampland program, both testing the swampland criteria in string compactifications and AdS/CFT, as well as studying their phenomenological implications.

I also work on the realisation of inflation and de Sitter in string theory, instabilities of non-susy vacua and different aspects of generalised and categorical symmetries.

Publications