The flavour enigma: new perspectives and opportunities

Why do elementary particles exhibit such striking patterns of masses and mixing? And why, despite increasingly precise measurements, have we seen so little evidence of new physics in flavour-changing processes? These are two sides of the flavour enigma: one rooted in the unexplained structure of the Standard Model, the other in the puzzling absence of flavour signals from physics beyond it.

In this colloquium, I will discuss new perspectives on these two fundamental puzzles and the opportunities they offer for discovering new physics. In particular, I will introduce minimal flavour protection, a new framework that offers a fresh approach to the flavour problem and opens promising directions for model building and phenomenology. I will highlight how these ideas can guide future searches, connecting fundamental questions about the structure of matter with experimental opportunities.