CERN Accelerating science

NEW STAFF MEMBERS AND FELLOWS - March 2021

Federico Betti

I am a Research Fellow working in the LHCb experiment. During my PhD in Bologna, I have worked on the first observation of CP violation in the decay of charm mesons. As a Fellow, I will continue to perform measurements in this field. I will be also involved in the development of the Electromagnetic Calorimeter for the Upgrade of the LHCb detector, in particular I will focus on the reconstruction algorithm.

Erica Brondolin

I am an an experimental particle physicist in the EP-CMG group. My research interests revolve mainly around particle reconstruction in high-density environments, Higgs physics and silicon sensors characterisation. During my PhD thesis at HEPHY (Vienna), I mainly worked in the track reconstruction of the CMS experiment for the High Luminosity LHC era: a very challenging environment with more than thousands of tracks to reconstruct! I was involved in event reconstruction for future colliders (CLIC) and electrical characterisation of large-area silicon sensors in my CERN Fellowship. Currently, I am joining the EP-CMG group as Staff where I develop novel reconstruction algorithms for jet reconstruction for the new High-Granularity Calorimeter detector which will be installed in CMS for the HL-LHC.

Alessandro Caratelli

I am a microelectronic engineer with a Ph.D. in digital Microelectronics. I joined the CERN team initially as a technical student in 2015. During the years I have been working on different positions in the design of several digital and mixed-signal radiation tolerant ASICs for high energy physics experiments. I’m currently responsible for the CMS Outer Tracker Short-Strip IC design and testing. At the same time, one of my responsibilities is to provide support to IC designers at CERN and in collaborating HEP Institutes for the effective use of the microelectronics physical design tool, flows and process design kits.

Mathilde Doriane Carlotta

I am a Health, Safety and Environment Engineer graduate from Polytech Grenoble. I started my fellowship in March and joined ATLAS Safety Team. My first experience at CERN was as a trainee in the same team in 2020. I am working on various subjects concerning safety matters within ATLAS experiment.

Marco Cipriani

I am an experimental particle physicist joining the CMS experiment as a research fellow. I have been a member of CMS for six years, first focusing on the tantalizing search for new physics with the first LHC data at 13 TeV and then developing a growing interest in precision measurements of the standard model, which I also cultivated as a PostDoc.
During my fellowship I will work on the precision measurement of the W boson mass, while also taking an active role in the detector upgrade project to prepare for the HL-LHC phase.

Jack Alexander Devlin

As a new staff member in the EP department, I will be continuing my work with BASE experiment, a cryogenic Penning trap located in the Antiproton Decelerator. The experiment captures and stores antiprotons, and then makes comparisons between the properties of matter and antimatter. These measurements serve as a high precision test of Charge-Parity-Time Reversal (CPT) symmetry. I am also exploring ways in which we can use the technology and techniques at BASE to search for ultralight dark matter axions, and I am excited to collaborate with colleagues at CERN to contribute to this exciting field

Yann Donon

I am a computer scientist in the Detector Interface section (EP-DT-DI), I come from Switzerland and studied in Lausanne until 2017, during the last years I have been doing a joint PhD at CERN and in the Russian aerospace. I hold a degree in IT, a second in IT management and third in Data Science. My key interest are noised data analysis, anomaly detection and behaviour prediction. In the past I have been working at CERN’s TE and IT departments, from March, I am working on DUNE data acquisition and data quality management systems as a senior fellow.

Aristeidis Fkiaras

My journey at CERN first started in 2017 when I joined the IT department. During my 3 years there I got familiar with exciting new technologies and evolved myself as a Software and Devops Engineer. Recently, I joined the EP department to work as a DevOps engineer for the LHCb and in particular the Online sysadmins team. Online for sure is an environment that brings many challenges for a DevOps engineer and I am happily looking forward to them.

Blerina Gkotse

I am a Senior Fellow working in the EP-DT Irradiation Facilities team. I have a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering and last year I received a PhD in Computer Science from MINES ParisTech PSL University in Paris. During my fellowship, my responsibilities are shared between the operation (as well as the hardware and software upgrades) for the EP facilities IRRAD and GIF++ and the R&D within the European Projects AIDAinnova and RADNEXT where I am involved in the development of software tools for data management, material traceability, dosimetry/beam measurements, web-portals, and recommender systems.

Ola Groettvik

I am a senior fellow and a new member of the ALICE ITS upgrade team. I have a background as an electronics engineer and recently received my PhD at the Department of Physics and Technology at the University of Bergen. For my PhD, I worked on a readout and control system for medical proton CT imaging using silicon pixel sensors. I am particularly interested in FPGA development, and a large part of my work at CERN will be to oversee the completion and optimization of the ITS readout unit firmware. I will also be working with integration, commissioning, and maintenance of all the off-detector electronics.

Floris Keizer

In January 2021, I started my CERN fellowship on the LHCb Ring-Imaging Cherenkov (RICH) detectors. My research focuses on detector developments and simulation for future upgrades, in particular the use of sub-nanosecond time information to improve the particle ID performance in the high-luminosity environment. I completed my PhD in high-energy physics at the University of Cambridge a year and a half ago, and worked as a project associate at CERN since then. Now as a fellow, I am looking forward to extend the detector R&D to beam tests of upgrade prototypes, to collaborate on the commissioning of the LHC Run 3 detector and to continue future upgrade simulation studies.

Aimilianos Koulouris

I joined ATLAS seven years ago for my undergraduate thesis with the New Small Wheel project. After contributing to the design & development of the detector upgrade throughout my PhD, I continued with the same project, coordinating the detector commissioning for the past two years. Now I join the ATLAS Level 1 Central Trigger group to work on the Muon to Central Trigger Processor interface upgrade and ongoing operations of the central trigger system. Looking forward to learning more about ATLAS and contributing to the experiment.

Sourav Kundu

I am a new CERN fellow, working in the ALICE experiment. I recently completed my PhD from NISER Bhubaneswar, India. The primary goal of my research is to understand the properties of Quark- Gluon-Plasma (QGP) that can be created in heavy-ion collisions. As a CERN fellow, I will study light nuclei production to understand the production mechanism of light nuclei at extremely high temperature and energy density. In addition, I would also like to contribute to the development of the ITS detector for the ALICE experiment.

Cédric Landraud

I am a new LD staff technician in EP/DT/FS for the construction and maintenance of detector CO2 cooling systems for LHC experiments. I will manage the construction activities in the workshop, organise the spare parts store for the maintenance with INFOR-EAM, participate in the qualification of new components, take part in the commissioning phase of future systems and also in the section stand-by duty service. Currently, I work on DEMO project which is the prototype for the next generation of cooling systems for CMS and ATLAS Ph2 upgrades with a power at least ten times larger than what we have built until now

Matt Leblanc

I joined the CERN ATLAS Team as a new research fellow in January 2021. I am interested in studying the physics of the strong interaction, particularly how measurements of jet substructure and event shapes may provide opportunities to better understand the Standard Model. I contribute to jet reconstruction and calibration work within ATLAS, having worked particularly to improve large-radius jet precision using in situ techniques and by incorporating tracking information within substructure reconstruction. I have also started to help with the development of new monolithic silicon detectors, for use in future experimental settings.

Carla Marin Benito

I am a research fellow joining the LHCb CERN team in February. I will continue exploring rare decays of b hadrons and developing the reconstruction and trigger algorithms needed for their study. I obtained my PhD from Universitat de Barcelona and completed a postdoc at IJCLab (former LAL) in Orsay. As a CERN fellow, I will extend my study of rare b-hadron decays to the angular analysis of rare b-baryon decays, which can bring complementary information on the current hints for New Physics from LHCb. I will also work on the calorimeter reconstruction for Run 3, within the Real Time Analysis project and I will act as coordinator of the overall LHCb reconstruction. In addition, I will work on R&D for the Upgrade 2 of the LHCb calorimeter, in particular in the optimisation of the reconstruction exploiting timing and z-segmentation information.

Zakaria Oichikh

I am working as a Health Safety, Environment Engineer Fellow at CMS experiment. I’m in charge of improving our CMS safety system through EAM. Deputy of LEXGLIMOS, I do risk assessments and prepare training and communications as well as emergency situations in collaboration with the fire brigade through our management system ISO 45001. I review and propose procedures to avoid incidents/accidents. I am also attached to several improvement development projects at CMS. Before joining CMS, I worked for Continental and John Zink Hamworthy as a QHSE Engineer in various Quality Safety, Environment certification projects and missions in France and Luxembourg.

Stefano Trogolo

I am an experimental physicist and new CERN research fellow, working in the ALICE experiment. I am particularly interested in studying the properties of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) created in heavy-ion collisions via the measurement of the heavy-flavor particle and hypernuclei production. I received my PhD from Torino University and completed a postdoc at the Padova University. As a fellow, I will extend my research on heavy-flavor production in small and large colliding systems. Furthermore, I will be involved in the development of the software trigger for the ALICE Run 3 data taking period.

Remus-Gheorghita VRANCIANU

After 4 countries, 2 continents and 20 years of gaining experience in designing and producing components for aerospace, automotive, medical equipment, oil and gas industry, in January I joined the EP team at CERN. My activities will involve, manufacturing and integration of upgraded components for projects like ATLAS ITk Pixel detector, CMS, ISOLDE, etc.