Curriculum vitæ
I am an active member of the Fermi Large Area Telescope collaboration since 2002. As such, I have contributed to several different aspects of the LAT (a space-based, high-energy gamma-ray telescope) development and operation: from the construction of the silicon tracker to the assessment and monitoring of the instrument performance and, the scientific data analysis. Within the Fermi LAT collaboration I served as analysis coordinator and coordinator of the Cosmic-Ray bubble and the Calibration and Analysis and Dark Matter and New Physics Science Working Groups.
I am the Italian Co-PI, as well as the convener of the Science Analysis and Simulation Working Group for the IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) Small Explorer mission, launched on December 8, 2021. This is the coronation of a successful R&D activity on gas pixel detectors for x-ray astronomical polarimetry I have partecipated in since 2001—giving significant contributions to the implementation of the data acquisition system, the event reconstruction software and the Monte Carlo simulation of the detector.
Positions held
- Associate professor, Università di Pisa.
- Visiting scientist, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
- Assistant professor (ricercatore universitario), Università di Pisa.
- Post-doc (ricercatore art. 23 DPR 12/2/1991-171), INFN–Pisa.
- Post-doc (assegnista di ricerca INFN), INFN–Pisa.
- Post-doc (ricercatore art. 23 DPR 12/2/1991-171), INFN–Pisa.
- Post-doc (assegnista di ricerca INFN), INFN–Pisa.
Education
- Ph.D., Applied Physics, Università di Pisa.
- M.S., Physics, Università di Pisa (110/110 cum laude).
- High-school diploma, Liceo Ginnasio A. da Pontedera (60/60).
Responsibilities
- Italian Co-PI for the IXPE mission.
- Convener of the IXPE Science Analysis and Simulation working group.
- analysis coordinator for the Fermi-LAT collaboration (on leave at SLAC).
- deputy analysis coordinator for the Fermi-LAT collaboration.
- member of the Fermi-LAT publication board.
- member of the Fermi-LAT speakers bureau.
- coordinator of the Fermi-LAT Dark Matter and New Physics science working group.
- coordinator of the Fermi-LAT Calibration and Analysis science working group.
- coordinator of the Fermi-LAT Cosmic-ray group.
Conference organization
- Member of the Local Organizing Committee (and convener of the astroparticle physics session) for the 15th Pisa Meeting on Advanced Detectors (La Biodola, May 22–28, 2022).
- Member of the Local Organizing Committee (and convener for the session about gas detectors) for the 14th Pisa Meeting on Advanced Detectors (La Biodola, May 27–June 2, 2018).
- Member of the Science Organizing Committe for SciNeGHE 2016: High-energy Gamma-ray Experiments at the Dawn of Gravitational-Wave Astronomy (Pisa, October 18–21, 2016).
- Member of the Science Organizing Committe for the Sixth International Fermi Symposium (Washington, November 9–13, 2015).
Journal referee
I am a referee for The Astrophysical Journal, The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Astronomy and Astrophysics, New Journal of Physics, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A, Advances in Space Research, Journal of Instrumentation, and IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems.
Scientific activity
- I continue to be engaged in the analysis of data from the prime phase of the IXPE mission.
- I have been deeply involved in the development of the IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) mission, successfully launched on December 8, 2022. I am the Italian Co-PI of the mission and the convener of the Science Analysis and Simulation working group.
- I have been deputy analysis coordinator (from March 2014 to March 2015) and analysis coordinator (from March 2015 to March 2016) for the Fermi-LAT collaboration. Since March 2014 I am member of the Fermi-LAT publication board and speakers bureau.
- I am a member of the Extreme Energy Events (EEE) collaboration. I have given a prominent contribution to the implementation of the data-processing pipeline for the experiment and the associated data quality monitoring infrastructure.
- I have been heavily involved in a long-term project (Pass 8) for a comprehensive revision of the Fermi LAT event level analysis, based on the experience gained while operating the instrument on orbit through the prime phase of the mission. Released on June 24, 2015, Pass 8 will be used for the archival form of the Fermi LAT data and constitutes a major step toward the full realization of the LAT scientific potential.
- While serving as a coordinator of the Calibration and Analysis LAT science working group I have been working on the study and characterization of the systematic uncertainties connected with the LAT response functions. I am one of the three corresponding authors of the reference paper on the analysis of publicly-released LAT data.
- I played a key role in the measurement of the inclusive Cosmic-ray electron spectrum. I gave significant personal contributions to several aspects of the analysis, including the event selection, the evaluation of the background contamination and the study of the systematic uncertainties. The first paper published on this subject by the collaboration in 2009 is still one of the most cited LAT papers. I am one of the three co-authors of a solicited review paper about cosmic-ray studies with the Large Area Telescope, published in a special issue of Astroparticle Physics.
- I have been regularly working on the implementation and fine tuning of the LAT data monitoring infrastructure. I am one of the developers of the software used by the Instrument Science Operation Center for monitoring the data integrity and detector performance. I am the main developer and maintainer of the automated alarm system running on the LAT data processing pipeline.
- I participated in the preparation and execution of the beam test campaign, at CERN and GSI, of the LAT Calibration Unit. During the assembly of the unit and the actual test I coordinated the activities related to the electronics, data acquisition system and online monitoring.
- During the construction of the LAT silicon tracker I played a major role in the production and testing of the flight hardware, contributing to the definition and implementation of the test strategy and the characterization of the instrument performance. I took part to the environmental tests of the tracker modules, during which I was responsible for the electronics and DAQ.
- Since my master thesis I participated in a R&D activity on gas pixel detectors aimed at exploiting the photoelectric effect for the measurement of linear polarization in x-ray astronomical sources. We designed, produced and successfully tested three generations of dedicated ASICs where the charge collecting anode and the readout electronics are fully integrated. In its current implementation, the sensor is essentially ready to be flown at the focus of an x-ray optic.
Teaching activity
- I am one of the teachers for the Computing methods for experimental Physics and data analysis course, part of the master and PhD program in Physics at the University of Pisa.
- I am teaching the lab course (Laboratorio di Fisica I) for the first-year of the undergraduate Physics curriculum at the University of Pisa. I am one of the main developers of plasduino, a project for an inexpensive, general purpose data acquisition system for didactic experiments based on the arduino board. The work has been awarded a honorable mention at the XCIX Congresso Nazionale della Società; Italiana di Fisica and the corresponding paper is publicly available here.
- Responsible for part of the lab course (Laboratorio di Fisica I/II) of the first-year undergraduate Physics curriculum at the University of Pisa.
- I was the technical coordinator of a project aimed at transferring some didactic experiments developed at the University of Pisa to local high schools.
- I regularly served as a teaching assistant for the lab course for the first-year undergraduate Physics students (Laboratorio di Fisica I/II, Proff. L. Martinelli, M. M. Massai, F. Angelini) at the University of Pisa. I am co-author of the corresponding introductory book in statistics and data analysis (in Italian). I'm the original developer and maintainer of PLAS, the data acquisition system used from 2002 to 2012 in the first-year physics lab at the University of Pisa.