CERN Accelerating science

NEW STAFF MEMBERS AND FELLOWS - JUNE 2021

Yoav Afik

I joined the CERN ATLAS team as a research fellow in June 2021. During my PhD at the Technion I focused on Dark Matter searches and new signatures of contact interactions. As a fellow, I intend to work on the first measurement of quantum entanglement between top quarks and on a search for spin-0 bosons which couples to top quarks, including interference effects with the Standard Model. Furthermore, I recently joined the EP-ADT-TR group and intend to work on the monitoring of the Muon to Central Trigger Processor interface.

Edvard Andreassen

I am a Norwegian Mechanical Engineer working since May as a Fellow in the ALICE Experiment (EP-AIO). I am responsible for operation and maintenance of the cooling systems of container data centres (CDC). I work on implementing the data centre facilities into the DCS (The Detector Control System) to ensure safe and correct operation of the data centre facilities. Main parts of my responsibility are status monitoring, alert systems, and the planning of maintenance interventions.

Lydia Beresford

I joined the CERN ATLAS team as a research fellow in March 2021. My research focuses on using the LHC as a photon collider. Photon collisions occur when the electromagnetic fields surrounding LHC protons or heavy ions interact. During my fellowship I plan to measure photo-production of tau lepton pairs to constrain the electromagnetic moments of the tau, indirectly probing for new physics. I will continue as a convener of the Standard Model soft QCD group. Finally, I will work on the development of the ATLAS High Granularity Timing Detector (HGTD), introducing new timing capabilities for the HL-LHC era.

Jonathan Bossio

I'm an experimental particle physicist working in the ATLAS experiment as a CERN Senior Research Fellow since April 2021. I joined the EP-ADP group to contribute to the Run 3 production version of Atlfast-III, by using advanced machine learning solutions to improve the performance. On the physics analysis side, I'm contributing significantly to the measurement of cross sections for W or Z boson production in association with jets. In addition, I'm involved in a search for low-mass dijet resonances using trigger-level jets and in a search for R-parity-violating supersymmetric particles in multi-jet final states.

Nadezda Chernyavskaya

I am a Senior Research Fellow and an experimental physicist working in the CMS collaboration. My research mainly focuses on studies of the Higgs boson and the development of machine learning algorithms to improve particle reconstruction at the LHC. During my doctorate at ETH Zurich, I led a search for Higgs boson pair production, a very rare process at the LHC that can shed light on our understanding of the future of the universe. During my time as a fellow I will work on a novel end-to-end approach to build particle candidates from raw detector information, while also contributing to the upgrade of the trigger system software and firmware.

Ana Cueto

I am originally from Spain. After doing my PhD in Madrid, I moved to Annecy to do my first postdoc and last April I joined CERN as a research fellow within the ATLAS Collaboration. I have recently started working with the inner tracker team to work on the upgrade of the pixel detector. I will contribute to the group by preparing for the final qualification and afterwards pre-production of pixel modules. Additionally, I will continue working on measurements of the Higgs couplings in the diphoton decay channel and its Effective Field Theory interpretation and other Standard Model measurements.

Loukas Gouskos

I am an experimental physicist working at the CMS experiment. I joined the CERN-CMS group as a Research Fellow in April 2019, and since April 2021I continue at CMS as a Research Staff at CERN. Through my career I worked on detector projects (R&D and commissioning of the CMS-CASTOR calorimeter, particle reconstruction in the CMS High Granularity Calorimeter upgrade for HL-LHC), event reconstruction particularly with the deployment of Machine Learning (ML) techniques, (focusing on the jet and missing energy objects) and physics analyses either searching for new physics signals or measuring the Higgs boson properties. As a Staff member of the organisation, I will continue studying the Higgs bosons properties with increased precision and contributing in the HGCAL upgrade program towards HL-LHC. Jet substructure techniques using ML is a topic of high interest and I am interested in contributing further on this front. I joined the FCCee project as a Fellow, focusing in detector design and jet reconstruction, and I plan to continue this effort.

Maxence Ledoux

I joined the EP-ESE-ME on April the first as staff member. I’m an electro-mechanical technician. I come from south of FRANCE and studied electronic at Toulouse college.

I hold a bachelor degree in embedded systems design. I’m currently working as support for the team, developing test boards for chips made by the section and also making some mechanical assembly to test the chips (RD53, BLM, GaN …). I’m really proud to contribute to such an experiment.

Erich Leistenschneider

I am a Research Fellow working at ISOLDE, CERN's radioactive ion beam facility. I am specialized in the experimental characterization of the structure of very rare nuclei, employing high-precision techniques imported from atomic physics. During my Ph.D. and postdoc times in North America, I employed ion trapping techniques to measure the masses of short-lived ions. As a fellow, I will join forces with the MIRACLS collaboration to measure the hyperfine structure of scarcely produced isotopes, using a novel collinear laser spectroscopy technique based on electrostatic ion traps.

Tym Pakulski

I will be working in EP-CMX on infrastructure for the Phase-2 CMS upgrade, in particular the CO2 cooling systems and associated services. My background is in mechanical and space systems engineering, and I spent the last 3 years as a fellow in EP-DT working on design and simulations of CO2 transfer lines. My work now will cover the design and coordination of the upgrade infrastructure networks more broadly, culminating in their installation and commissioning.

Lorenzo Pezzotti

As a Fellow of the EP-SFT Group, I am deeply involved in the testing and validation of Geant4, a toolkit for Monte Carlo simulation of the interaction of radiation with matter. I like the idea of contributing to a worldwide-used tool that somehow represents our best understanding of the field. Any improvement will propagate through the whole community, from CERN to the rest of the world, from fundamental research programs to technological applications, in the best knowledge-transfer spirit that characterizes the laboratory. Here at CERN, I have the opportunity to work with top-level experts, such as my Supervisor Alberto Ribon.