I completed my MSc at the University of Buenos Aires in 1998 working on the measurement of the production cross section of direct photons at the D0 experiment (Fermilab, USA). Afterwards, I worked in Sweden as a member of the Astroparticle Group of the Royal Institute of Technology studying cosmic rays. I did my PhD (2003, University of Buenos Aires) measuring the properties of quarks and gluons in high energy collisions at D0. In 2003 I became a postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University where I worked mainly at the CDF experiment (Fermilab) on top-quark physics and detector operations. In 2008 I joined the IFAE (Institut de Física d'Altes Energies) LHC-ATLAS experiment group as an ICREA Researcher. I am currently leading the ATLAS Detector upgrade effort at IFAE. In 2012 I became an ICREA Research Professor.

Research interests

My research has been focused on high-energy experimental particle physics: understanding which are the fundamental constitutes of nature and how they interact. At the Fermilab Tevatron accelerator I have performed studies of QCD and the properties of the heaviest quark, the top quark. At the LHC accelerator at CERN I conducted searches for new physics in the top sector. I have always been drawn to instrumentation R&D. Currently I lead a coordinated project to develop semiconductor pixel detectors for the ATLAS experiment. As a result of this project, 3D pixel silicon sensors designed and produced at Barcelona are included in the innermost detector layer of ATLAS and in the tracking system of the ATLAS Forward Proton detector. My recent work aims to develop radiation hard silicon sensors for tracking and timing detectors of the coming high luminosity LHC era. I am also co-leading a project to produce a new generation of real time breast biopsy machines based on CdTe sensors.