DUNE at Fermilab/SURF/CERN

Interests and Activities:

Development of calibration methods for the DUNE far detector, based on the ionization of the liquid argon with intense UV lasers

Tests of the DUNE prototypes at CERN

Long-baseline neutrino oscillations

Institutional Roles:

PI for LIP

Leader of the Calibration and Cryogenic Instrumentation Consortium

Member of the DUNE Executive Board

SNO+ at SNOLAB

SNO+ webpage at LIP

Interests and Activities:

Neutrino-less Double-Beta Decay with 130Te

Solar, Reactor and Geo-Neutrinos

Calibration of PMT and liquid scintillator properties

Institutional Roles:

PI for LIP; Spokesperson for Portugal

former Chair of the SNO+ Scientific Board (in 2010/11 and 2022/23)

Member of the SNO+ Excutive Committee and Analysis Coordination Committee

ATLAS at LHC/CERN

The ATLAS experiment is one two general-purpose detectors probing the physics of proton-proton and heavy ion collisions at the LHC at CERN. The discovery of the Higgs boson, jointly announced in 2012 by ATLAS and CMS, led to the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics to Peter Higgs and François Englert.

I have worked in ATLAS from 2004 to 2017, mostly in the development of software and data analysis methods for the Tile (hadronic) calorimeter, during the commissioning period, and on the search for the Higgs Boson in the H→bbar decay mode, in associated WH production.

Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO)

The SNO solar neutrino measurements have solved the Solar Neutrino Problem, showing that the neutrinos are produced in the expected number, but change flavor between production in the Sun’s core and detection in the Earth. For this achievement, Art McDonald, the SNO project director, was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics and the SNO Collaboration was awarded, together with other neutrino oscillation experiments, the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

The most accurate determinations of the total 8B solar neutrino flux and the θ12 neutrino mixing angle are due to SNO’s results. I joined SNO in 2002 (with Queen’s University, until 2004, from then on, at LIP. Here is the old LIP SNO page), and my activities in SNO have focused on the calibration of the optical properties of the detector (the photomultipliers, the heavy and the light water media), as well as the analysis of the neutrino oscillation parameters. The final solar neutrino paper from SNO was published in 2013. Since 2017, the SNO data is being reanalyzed in order to extract further physics measurements.

Borexino at Gran Sasso

The Borexino experiment pioneered several techniques in large volume, low-background, liquid scintillator detectors. The first real-time measurement of sub-MeV neutrinos (the 7Be flux) was carried out by Borexino.

I joined Borexino fom 1996 to 2003, first at INFN Milano, later at Queen’s. My main activities were on the design, construction, and initial commissioning of the Borexino calibration systems, on Monte Carlo simulations and solar neutrino sensitivity studies.