Summer School 2007

Luca Lozzi Eugenio Coccia Aldo Ianni COORDINATORS: Frank Calaprice Cristiano Galbiati ITALIAN TEACHERS/CHAPERONS: Assunta di Vacri obtained a Laurea Degree in Physics of the University of L'Aquila in 2003 with a valutation of 110/110 cum laude and a PhD in Physics of the same University in 2007. Her university education is mainly focused on Astroparticle and Astrophysics, also with a theoretical background in Quantum Field Theory. She has been carrying out her research activity at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory since 2002 on neutrino physics. In particular, it is mainly devoted to the development, characterization and study of possible applications in the field of the neutrino physics of metal loaded organic liquid scintillators. Moreover she’s currently part of the collaboration of the GERDA (GERmanium Detector Array) experiment, devoted to the search for 76Ge neutrinoless double beta-decay. Ettore Segreto: Date of Birth - 17 November 1973. Degree in physics in 2001. Laurea thesis title ‘Rivelazione e misura di eventi cosmici ionizzanti accompagnati da emissione di luce di scintillazione e di luce Cerenkov nel rivelatore ICARUS 10m3 presso i Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso’. Phd in physics in 2006. Phd thesis title `Analysis and Simulation of events with scintillation light emission from the ICARUS T600 LAr detector‘ .Actual position: postdoc in Gran Sasso National Laboratory. The research activity of Dr. E. Segreto has been carried out mainly in the Gran Sasso National Laboratory starting from Laurea thesis work, continued with Phd and actually as postdoc student. His activity is mainly based on ICARUS (Imaging Cosmic And Rare Underground Signals) experiment. He took place to the operation of the 10m3 prototype in 1999/2000 and to the test run of the ICARUS T600 detector in 2001. His specific activity in the experiment concerned the study of light production phenomena in Liquid Argon when excited by ionizing particles, namely scintillation and Cerenkov processes. Sonia Sebastiani: Born in Avezzano (AQ) in 1970. She studied at L'Aquila where she received a degree in foreing languages. Ms. Sebastiani has been working 5 years in a school of languages in Avezzano, INLINGUA, where she taught Italian to foreigners. For the past 3 years she has been working on a project for the Italian Defense Ministry, Euroformazione Difesa, teaching English to regular and army volunteers. In 2002 she moved to L'Aquila and started working for the Public Affairs Service of the Gran Sasso National Laboratory. This is her fifth summer at Princeton University. AMERICAN TEACHERS/CHAPERONS: Barbara Szczerbinska: Currently an Assistant Professor of Physics at Dakota State University in Madison, SD. She has been working at DSU, College of Arts and Sciences since summer 2006. Barbara received her PhD in Physics with an emphasis in theoretical nuclear physics from the University of South Carolina (USC) in Columbia, SC in 2006. Prior to that, Barbara spent 18 months working at the Institute of Nuclear Physics (present Polish Academy of Science) in Krakow, Poland. She also holds a MS in theoretical physics from University of Wroclaw (UW) in Wroclaw, Poland. Barbara’s current research interests focus on neutrino-nucleus cross sections relevant to atmospheric and long baseline experiments. She works on this subject together with world known researches in the field: Prof. Kuniharu Kubodera from University of South Carolina, Columbia SC, Prof. Harry Lee from Argonne National Laboratory, Batavia, IL and Prof. Toru Sato from Osaka University, Japan. She is also a member of Homestake-DUSEL Collaboration (Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory) which includes several in and out of state universities, Berkeley National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory. Barbara’s other responsibilities at DSU are related to teaching and service to the university and the community. She teaches a variety of undergraduate courses in physics – general physics, classical mechanics, electrodynamics, quantum physics etc. She supervises Women in Science and Technology organization which focuses on female students in all science and technology programs offered at the university. She helps the students to organize field trips (for example upcoming trip to Homestake Mine where students will be able to meet with several scientists from in and out of state, visit the mine, meet with the director of the lab, learn about the history and future opportunities of the mine), bring guest speakers (scientists from other universities, national labs, Europe). Barbara helps students to develop their internship opportunities at different research institutions and look for graduate programs after the graduation. Many of these activities are covered by American Association of University Women and NASA Space Grant – both awarded to Barbara’s proposals. Read more about Barbara Szczerbinska...