There is the
Italian
physicist
Graziano Venanzoni
, among the five leading scientists to keep an eye on in 2022 because they are moving on frontier research and potentially capable of opening completely new perspectives.
Venanzoni, who works in the Pisa section of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (Infn), was among the promoters and co-spokesperson of the experiment conducted by the international collaboration '
Muon g-2
', which in April 2021 had obtained "the most solid indication of the possible presence of
new physics
", that is a phenomenon not foreseen by the current theory of physics, the Standard Model. Led by the American Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) and by the Infn, the collaboration measured the magnetic properties of muons, similar particles to the electron but with a mass about 200 times greater, generated in nature when cosmic rays interact with the Earth's atmosphere. New data are expected in 2022, which could make even more stringent the proof that the observations made so far are actually a discovery, the first that opens the doors to new physics.
Another character who according to Nature could talk about himself in 2022 is the
Nigerian
epidemiologist
Chikwe Ihekweazu
, enlisted by the World Health Organization (WHO) following its commitment to set up the Center for Disease Surveillance and Control (NCDC) in Nigeria. Today Ihekweazu is the head of the WHO pandemic surveillance service and artificial intelligence is among the tools he uses to improve data collection on the Covid-19 pandemic in the world.
L '
astrophysicist Jane Rigby
, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, will have a lot to do in 2022 as scientific director of the James Webb space telescope, the successor to Hubble, destined to capture images of the first galaxies born after the Big Bang, also thanks to cutting-edge technology supplied by Italy with the Italian Space Agency (Asi) and the National Institute of Astrophysics (Inaf).
The
geneticist Love Dale '
, of the Swedish Museum of Natural History, has opened a new path by obtaining the sequence of the oldest DNA ever analyzed, which belonged to a mammoth that lived 1.65 million years ago; now it is preparing for new investigations, the results of which could arrive in 2022.
Finally, great expectations also from the
Chinese
politician
Xie Zhenhua
, China's delegate to COP26 and who could also be among the protagonists of the debate on measures to combat climate change in 2022.