Profile

I was born in Italy and I lived there until I graduated high school. I then moved to Scotland to study Physics at the University of Glasgow from which I graduated with a Master in Science. I returned to Italy for my Ph.D. and I am now in Swansea working as a research officer.

I have always liked travelling and hiking. This passion probably comes from the many years I spent in my local scout group. I really enjoy being surrounded by nature and walking long distance paths to explore new places.

I also enjoy playing sports: Basketball is the one I practised the most growing up, but I also played some football, and did track and field running and sailing.

Whenever I can I like to attend live music concerts or festivals. I really like the electric atmosphere of a good rock concert and it is a lot of fun to jump around to the music that you love.

When I am home for the night I like to relax and take my mind off work by either reading or watching a film.

I am a theoretical physicist who studies the fundamental building blocks of the universe using supercomputers. (A supercomputer is a computer that is more powerful than the ones we use in everyday life, it can deal with huge numbers very quickly).

These building blocks are called particles. You might have heard of protons, electrons, neutrons etc… These are all names of some of the particle we know. Physics studies how they behave: for example how quickly they move or what happens when two of them interact with each other. I am a theoretical physicist, this means I study the theory behind experiments, analyse results and predictions.

My research focuses on understanding how these different particles interact with each other and what happens to them as we increase the temperature around them. The temperatures are so high that they are close to the temperature of the Universe fraction of seconds after the Big Bang!

When I work I like to have a routine because it makes my days less stressful. I always have breakfast with coffee and toast, and I start and finish working at the same time every day.  Sometimes I have meetings with my collaborators where we discuss the results we get from calculations, we decide what to write in the articles or what to do next. When there are no meetings, I spend my days doing research (that’s mostly reading and thinking and using the supercomputer for calculations) or preparing presentations. Presenting at seminars and conferences is a big part of my job: recently, I have been showing my recent results at an international conference held in Liverpool where I showed my recent results to an audience of physicists coming from all over the world.

I also write proposals. These are descriptions of projects I would like to do: I have to explain the topic, my approach and why the idea is useful. We do this to apply for funds or when looking for a new job at a University.