SPACE -
Much of my work was done in the context of HERMES-Pathfinder, a constellation of nanosatellites to monitor cosmic explosions called gamma-ray bursts.
Beside software and data, I spend a lot of my time in labs.
In 2019 I took part to an experimental campaign to qualify GAGG:Ce scintillators for applications in space.
Between 2022 and 2023 I worked at the calibration of the seven HERMES scientific payloads.
Recently I have been working on LEM-X, a lunar high-energy observatory under study for the ASI Earth-Moon-Mars program.
I studied the scientific return expected for LEM-X, computing exposure maps and trying optimizing the for the payload layout and lunar landing site.
I am also experimenting with the use of neural networks to achieve better sky images with coded mask instruments, the design over which LEM-X is based.
ALGORITHMS -
With Kes Ward and others, I worked on an algorithm called Poisson-FOCuS.
It is a fast and powerful technique to detect anomalies in time series of counts, which can be used for discovering gamma-ray bursts.
In particular, I implemented an HERMES-specific version of Poisson-FOCuS and tested its performance on real and simulated data against other algorithms.
For this purpose I also wrote a software which simulates detectors, noise and gamma-ray burst called Synthburst.
DATA -
I wrote mescal, a software to tag each photon observed by the HERMES detector with an energy measure.
To achieve this, mescal is fed with data collected exposing the detector to multiple radioactive sources.
The software throws away noise, associate each data point to a source, does 1 + 1 and outputs tables allowing to energy-tag photons from
arbitrary sources.
Welcome to my homepage and thanks for the visit!