Habilitation Defence
"José Maneira completed his aggregation exams at the University of Lisbon with a lecture on ‘Neutrino oscillations and neutrinoless double beta decay: detector calibration as a tool for discovery’. "
On 8 October, our colleague José Maneira completed his aggregation exams in the area of Particle Physics and Astrophysics at the Rectory of the University of Lisbon with a lecture entitled ‘Neutrino oscillations and neutrinoless double beta decay: detector calibration as a tool for discovery’.
Before the lesson, he discussed his CV and the story of how he introduced a new area of research in experimental neutrino physics to Portugal, starting from his earlier involvement in the discovery of neutrino oscillation at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada. A journey of almost 20 years, in which he followed a strategy combining the construction and operation of instrumentation dedicated to the calibration of detectors, with analyses of the fundamental properties of neutrinos.
The current Neutrino Physics group, which he coordinates at LIP, has grown a lot and today plays a very important role in the successor experiment SNO+ and in one of the biggest projects for the future of particle physics, DUNE, whose prototypes are being tested at CERN, and in which José Maneira leads the international activities in Instrumentation and Cryogenics.
The discovery of oscillations has shown that neutrinos have mass, contrary to predictions, and has brought with it many new questions that these experiments could answer in the coming years: are neutrinos their own antiparticles? are they at the origin of the asymmetry between matter and antimatter in the Universe? This is one of the most active and surprising fields in particle physics, with fundamental implications for astrophysics and cosmology, as well as applications in geophysics and nuclear reactor monitoring. The aggregation exams also included the discussion of a proposal for a master's course in which all these issues are introduced to students from these various specialities.
The exams were unanimously approved by a jury made up of two professors from the University of Coimbra and five professors from the University of Porto and from the three faculties in Lisbon, FCUL, IST and FCT-UNL, as well as a researcher from C2TN/IST.
Congratulations Zé!