New Staff members and fellows: January – March 2020

Gianmario Bergamin

I am an electronics engineer and I joined the EP-ESE-ME group at CERN as fellow in January 2020. As a digital designer, I work on the design of the CMS Outer Tracker Front-End ASICs continuing the work started during my master thesis. My role is to contribute to the development of next prototypes with particular emphasis on new Design For Testability solutions.

Matias Alejandro Bonaventura

As a Fellow for the data acquisition (DAQ) of the ATLAS experiment, I am working on the design of the future Storage Handler for run 4, a high-throughput distributed data storage. We have the challenging task of implementing a distributed storage that should cope with throughput of 7.8 TB/s with a writing rate of 1MHz. I finished my PhD in Computer Science on the simulation of data acquisition networks in the University of Buenos Aires. I have been contributing to the ATLAS DAQ since 2014 involved in network simulation and operation projects. Before, I have worked 6+ years as a software developer in different companies.

Lydia Brenner

As a CERN research fellow, I will work on the ATLAS experiment and I will contribute to the final Run-2 luminosity calibration as well as on preparations for vdM scans in Run-3. I will work on the finalisation of the full Run-2 H->gamma gamma analysis, with responsibility for the unfolding/fitting framework. When this effort conclude I will continue to focus on Higgs properties measurements. I will continue as a member of the ATLAS statistics committee.
Finally, I will contribute to the commissioning of the FASER tracking detector. As well as help with the analysis of the first physics data.

Leonardo Cristella

I am an experimental particle physicist and I started a fellowship within the CMS experiment. I am involved in the High Granularity Calorimeter (HGCAL) project for the HL-LHC. During my Ph.D. at University of Bari I worked on data analysis, performing a search for tetra-quark particles in CMS. As a postDoc I joined the CRAB team, aiming at improving the efficiency of CMS distributed analysis jobs on the WLCG. My current focus is on the development of the HGCAL reconstruction towards its integration into the high-level trigger phase and the CMS global event description.

Otilia Ducu

I recently integrated the ATLAS CERN team as a research fellow. I plan to continue to participate in searches for new physics with same-sign and multilepton final states, as I did before joining CERN. In parallel, I will contribute to the activities of the muon New Small Wheel CERN team to help preparing for Run-3. Later, I will also restart some performance studies for electrons or photons, a domain in which I was significantly involved during Run-2.

Anja Himmerlich

I am a new fellow at CERN working in the EP-DT group in the SSD (Solid State Detector) laboratory. I will focus on the characterisation of radiation induced defects, that are leading to performance degradation in silicon detectors, by using defect spectroscopy measurements (e.g. DLTS – Deep Level Transient Spectroscopy and TSC – Thermally Stimulated Currents). Thereby, I will concentrate in particular on performance degradation of p-type silicon devices by acceptor removal effects. I performed my PhD studies at Technical University Ilmenau (Germany) focusing on the epitaxial growth and surface characterisation of III-nitride semiconductor materials.

Esteban Curras Rivera

Since 1st March I am member of the EP-DT group. One of my main tasks will be to participate in the EP-R&D Programme on Technologies for Future Experiments. In particular, I will be part of the WP1 that is called: Silicon Detectors. In this context, I will work with Michael Moll (my Fellow supervisor), Dominik Dannheim and Federico Ravotti in the “simulation and characterization of silicon detectors” and some collaboration too with Victor Coco in the topic of “hybrid pixel detectors”. More in detail, my work will focus on radiation damage characterization and the characterization infrastructure: with laser test stands, flexible r/o systems and defect characterization. Also, in collaboration with RD50, I will perform radiation-damage models for defects damage characterization and quantitative damage prediction for LGAD and p-type sensors.

Placido Fernandez

During my PhD I was involved with the LHCb upgrade for Run 3 where I developed and optimized Kalman filter software and tracking algorithms for different hardware architectures. My research focused on the application of high performance computing techniques for high-energy physics. After my PhD I joined the EP-LCD group, working on a framework for future experiments for CLIC, FCC, and SuperCharmTau factories.

Mykyta Haranko

I am a new fellow at CERN working on the Phase-2 upgrade of the CMS luminosity systems in the context of the BRIL project. In the scope of my PhD project at DESY (Hamburg), I have developed a test DAQ system for the Phase-2 upgrade of the CMS Outer Tracker. In my new role, I will apply the FPGA experience gained in the former project to integrate luminosity data processing functionality in the back-end systems of various upgraded CMS detectors and also contribute to the development of a new standalone luminosity detector for BRIL.

Christoph Hasse

Before my fellowship I was a CERN doctoral Student within the German Wolfgang-Gentner program.
My thesis focused on developing new event reconstruction algorithms to enable the first stage of LHCb’s High Level Trigger (HTL) to process the expected event rate of 30MHz in run 3.
During my fellowship I will continue this work and take part in the effort to improve the second stage of the trigger system as well as the following commissioning of the entire trigger system.

Nicolo Jacazio

I am CERN Fellow studying the production of light and heavy flavour hadron production in pp and heavy-ion collisions at the LHC. I have obtained my PhD in Physics a year ago at the University of Bologna. I am currently working in the ALICE experiment to develop the new software needed for physics analyses of the Run3 data. I have contributed to the ALICE TOF detector maintenance and upgrade. I am also carrying out the software development for Quality Control during data taking.

Thomas James

I have recently joined CERN EP-CMD as a fellow working on machine learning in FPGAs for the CMS level 1 trigger and 40 MHz data scouting. This project is in collaboration with CERN Openlab and Micron Technology, who are providing FPGA-based processing boards and deep learning accelerators. Previously I was a Postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London, where I worked on the CMS level 1 track-trigger for the High Luminosity LHC, and the development of the tracker back end systems. My PhD focussed on an all-FPGA track finder demonstrator for CMS.

Jochen Klein

After an INFN fellowship at Torino, I returned to CERN as a staff member with the ALICE Collaboration in January 2020. As Upgrade Coordinator, my main focus is on preparing the ground for future extensions of the experiment for Run 4 and beyond. In addition, I am involved in the commissioning of detectors to be installed during the ongoing Long Shutdown, the development of the analysis framework, and the preparation for physics in Run 3.

Magdalena Kowalska

I have (re-)joined the Small and Medium Experiments (SME) Group as an experimental research physicist, after a year as a professor at the University of Geneva. I will continue working mostly at the ISOLDE facility, but will also explore synergies with other experimental programs at CERN, such as the AD. My research will focus on the use of radioactive nuclei in a variety of fields. I will continue my ERC Grant devoted to first biological applications of an ultrasensitive Nuclear Magnetic Resonance observed via beta-decay asymmetry. I will also search for New Physics by determining the Vud matrix element of the CKM matrix in the decay of spin-polarised nuclei.

Santeri Laurila

I am an experimental particle physicist from Finland, joining the EP-CMG group as a research fellow. For my PhD, I searched for charged Higgs bosons and worked for the CMS Level-1 trigger. This is an exciting time to come to CERN: we still have a lot to learn from Run-2 data, while preparations for Run 3 and HL-LHC are in full swing. I will work on Higgs measurements with “boosted” objects, squeezing the most out of the Run-2 data, and on the trigger side where new, clever triggering strategies enable us to broaden the physics reach of the experiment.

Jeppe Madsen

I am a new staff member working in the Medipix team as an electronics technical engineer. My main tasks will be wafer testing and providing support to users of the Medipix family of ASICS. I have a background in philosophy and political communication but later changed focus to work with electronics at the Niels Bohr Institute, where I completed my five-year internship to become a technical engineer. Before arriving at CERN, I was working with health science as a mass spectrometry specialist at a clinical proteomics research group in Copenhagen. Here I was focusing on instrumentation in the effort to bring LC/MS technology to the clinics.

Linda Mallem

I started my career as an executive assistant at the headquarters of large multinationals such as Carrefour, Areva and L’Oréal. In April 2018, I was hired as a temporary administrative assistant at the CERN Users’ Office, which lead to me applying for and being offered a staff position in January of this year. Navigating an international organization such as CERN feels natural to me and is consequently greatly rewarding. The Users’ Office is the first point of contact for CERN’s associated guest scientists (Users, COAS and VISC) and provides customer service to those coming to work in the field of experimental physics. We truly represent the face of CERN for this wide community (13 000 USERs from around 110 different nationalities and 76 different countries). If my main task is to ensure the respect of the contractual aspects of our guest scientists’ association with CERN, I also get to work on side projects. This year, I will focus on strengthening the relationship between the Users’ Office and the Service Desk. The project will involve providing the Service Desk with clear standard answers and generally expanding the Users’ Office existing offer of knowledge articles. I will do my best to ensure my contribution makes a difference to the User community, allowing them to work in the best conditions possible, whether on site or remotely, all the while honouring CERN’s core values.

Stavros Mallios

After finishing and successfully defending my thesis on firmware development for the Phase-2 CMS L1 trigger project, I was selected to work as a CERN senior fellow for the High Granularity Calorimeter (HGCAL). HGCAL is a new detector designed to meet the challenges of the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). More specifically, I am working on developing firmware for the Data Acquisition system (DAQ) of the CMS HGCAL project. The HGCAL DAQ system interacts with the on-detector electronics of the calorimeter and sends the event data to the central data acquisition system of CMS. This task requires apart from firmware development, hardware work, as well as development of supporting software. 
 
The work is being supervised by Paschalis Vichoudis and in close collaboration with the head of the CMX electronics group David Barney.

Leonardo Marcon

I am Leonardo Marcon an Italian researcher with a Ph.D. in telecommunication engineering, and in particular in distributed optical sensing, achieved at University of Padova. I have started working at CERN as a Senior Fellow from March 1st 2020. My job here focus on improving, testing, and qualifying the drivers and optical transceivers of the optical channels deployed in accelerators and experiments, to increase their maximum data rate and make them more radiation tolerant. I will be working for the EP-ESE-BE section under the supervisor on Dr. Jan Troska.

Felice Pantaleo

I am an applied physicist who first arrived at CERN 10 years ago as a Summer Student. I joined the EP-CMG group and CMS first as Doctoral Student, then as Fellow and today as Staff member. I will work on the software reconstruction of the CMS Phase 2 high granularity endcap calorimeter using state-of-the-art heterogeneous computing, performance portability and machine learning techniques.

Carmelo Scarcella

I received my master’s degree in Electronic Engineering and Ph.D. from Politecnico di Milano. In September 2016 I joined as a fellow the EP-ESE Group at CERN, where I was involved in the development single-mode rad-hard optical links for particle accelerators in collaboration with the Beam Instrumentation Group. I am starting a new journey in the EP-ESE back-end Section where I will be working on the development of the next generation of radiation resistant data transmission systems for High Energy Physics, based on Silicon Photonics.

Antonija Utrobicic

I am an experimental physicist with the main research interest in the field of gaseous particle detector systems. During my Ph.D. at the University of Zagreb, I was mainly engaged in the optimization of their performance and the research of the operational stability where I specialized effects of the electrical discharge propagation in a gas electron multiplier (GEM) detector. At CERN, I joined the Gaseous Detector Development (GDD) group as a fellow where I will work on an extension of a PICOSEC Micromegas detector to a multichannel system and continue the research of the Micro-Pattern Gaseous Detectors (MPGD) stability.

Valentin Volkl

I am a CERN fellow in the SFT group working on the Key4HEP project, i.e. software and simulations for Future Colliders.
As a doctoral student I was already working on the Future Circular Collider Design Study, writing my thesis on track reconstruction with timing information in FCC-hh.
This also gave me a strong sense of the importance of collaborations in High Energy Physics, especially in software, and organizations such as the HEP Software Foundation.
So I am looking forward to continue working on the future of our field, now on the collaborative project Key4HEP with colleagues from CLIC, FCC and CEPC.