This is my professional/scientific homepage. All stuff related to writing is in this other page.
(This website is proudly designed in "Prof. Dr. style", using Emacs as text editor.)
My ongoing research activities are listed here.
Broadly speaking, I am interested into:
A longer and commented list of the main articles, with personal contribution and highlights, is available here (also includes public and internal notes).
Co-author of several more ALEPH and CMS papers;
complete list available in my Inspires profile.
Articles for non-specialists:
Interviews:
Reviews of popular science books:
Non-physics academic audiences:
Non-physics papers as part of the data:
Belgian-Dutch-German School in Particle Physics (BND School), 2019:
CMS Data Analysis School (CMSDAS) 2019:
CMS Data Analysis School (CMSDAS) 2012:
Doctoral commission for Sciences (CDD) at UCL:
CP3 seminars:
Astrophysics and Nuclear Astrophysics course at UCL:
Particle Physics course at UCL:
Scuola Normale Superiore (italian):
CERN Summer Students:
Projects that I proposed (pages restricted to CMS members):
Organization of Conferences, Workshops, Schools:
Resources:
Meetings:
Other resources:
Top Quark Physics Analysis Group (convener 2014-2016):
Simulations (convener 2012-2013):
Fast Simulation (convener 2011):
dE/dx and HSCPs:
Jets:
Tracker hardware:
Other CMS stuff:
PhD thesis and its defense talk
Curriculum Vitae:
Contact informations:
Pictures:
Work-related:
After work:
Going out in Geneva:
"One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that sometimes you must work under adverse conditions ... like a state of sheer terror." (W. K. Hartmann)
"There are some people who deeply and basically dislike theories and are hostile to speculations. These are usually unsure people who, whirling in uncertainties, try to steady themselves by grabbing and tightly holding on to facts... To such a person a theory is a lie until it is proven and then it becomes a truth or a fact. But there's no joy in it. Now -- to get to my theory." (John Steinbeck)
"It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts..." (Sherlock Holmes)
"I am familiar with a number of experimental physicists and they are sort of men of the earth. Therefore, I have always suspected that, one day, working far away from theorists, close to their big machines, they will get the idea of a new experiment: an experiment which will test the oracle. They would like to see what would happen, just for the fun of it, if they falsely report that there exists a certain bump, or an oscillation in a certain curve, and see how the theorists predict it. I know these men so well that the moment I thought of that possibility I have honestly always been concerned that some day they will do just that. That you can imagine how absurd the theoretical physicists would sound, making all these complicated calculations to demonstrate the existence of such a bump, while these fellows are laughing up their sleeves." (Richard Feynman)
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." (Douglas Adams)
"When we jumped into Sicily, the units became separated, and I couldn't find anyone. Eventually I stumbled across two colonels, a major, three captains, two lieutenants, and one rifleman, and we secured the bridge. Never in the history of war have so few been led by so many." (General James Gavin, but also the mail signature of a CMS member)
"Subtract infinity, add heavy fermions, set all fermion masses to zero, invent another symmetry, throw it on the lattice, blame it on the Planck scale, recall the success of the Standard Model, invoke the Anthropic Principle, wave hands a lot, speak with a strong accent, manipulate the data." (author unknown)
"I have done a terrible thing: I invented a particle that cannot be detected." (Wolfgang Pauli)
"Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion." (Richard Feynman)
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny ...'" (Isaac Asimov)
"Why is it that you physicists always require so much expensive equipment? Now the department of Mathematics requires nothing but money for paper, pencils and waste paper baskets and the department of Philosophy is better still. It does not even ask for waste paper baskets." (Apocryphal)
"Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend." (Mao Tse-Tung)
"Outside the ordered universe is that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity" (H.P. Lovecraft)
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." (H.P. Lovecraft)
"Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe." (Frank Zappa)
"One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid." (James D. Watson)
"The circle of the sky metes out my glory, The libraries of the East contend for my poems, Emirs seek me out to fill my mouth with gold, Angels already know by heart my latest ghazal. My working tools are humiliation and an anguish; Would to God I'd been stillborn." (From the Divan of Abulcasim El Hadrami, 12th century - Jorge Luis Borges)
"The creation of the heavens and of the Earth is indeed more grandiose than the creation of Man. Yet most men understand not." (Quran 40:57)
"For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief." (Ecclesiastes 1:18)
"Science never cheered up anyone. The truth about the human situation is just too awful." (Kilgore Trout via Kurt Vonnegut)
"The physicists' calling is awesome: memoirs and biographies often present this corps d'elite as unique, Prometean heroes of the search for truth. Traditionally the mysteries of the universe have been the province of theologians and priests. Physicists of course do not see themselves as writing the cosmology of some secular religion: for them, religion is about belief rather than knowledge. But they do see their own profession as the revelation and custody of fundamental truth, and to a surprising degree Western culture confirms them in this privileged role. They bring news of another world: hidden but stable, coherent, and incorruptible. In times of bewildering and threatening change, this gospel, however esoteric, has a very deep appeal." (Sharon Trawek - "Beamtimes and lifetimes")
"This is a complex matter. It is not to be solved by decree of even the Commissariat of Agriculture. We shall go to the pyre, we shall burn, but we shall not retreat from our convictions. (...) This is a fact, and to retreat from it simply because some occupying high posts desire it, is impossible." (Nikolai Vavilov, shortly before being deported to Siberia)
"Era un mondo adulto, si sbagliava da professionisti." (Paolo Conte)
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