(June 30, 2017) Anna Grassellino, Deputy Head of the Fermilab Technical Division in the United States, graduated in Electronic Engineering at the University of Pisa in 2005. Last January, she and another hundred scientists were awarded by former US President Barack Obama the PECASE award, the greatest recognition that the US government offers to young and promising professionals in the field of scientific research. On Monday July 3, Grassellino will recount her research at an event devoted to the Pisa School of Engineering at the University of Pisa, in the presence of the Mayor of Pisa Marco Filippeschi, of Deputy Dean Nicoletta de Francesco, of those who were her teachers and students who will become their future colleagues. Anna will present the work that has earned her the prestigious recognition, and which concerns the superconductive radiofrequency cavities, used in the latest generation particle accelerators. The scientist and his research team have in fact designed and built a new type of resonant cavities for accelerators, developing a technology to introduce a small nitrogen concentration on the internal surface of niobium cavities. This has tripled the quality factor – a measure of cavity capacity to accumulate energy – compared to the best previous result. “This discovery – the scientist explains – will be able to reduce the accelerator cooling cost by 50%, for a total savings of hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, cooling the accelerator to the temperature of the deep space represents one of the major operating costs of an accelerator. At present, we are studying applications of this technology in the field of medicine and quantum engineering. ” After graduating from Pisa, Anna Grassellino received a Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been researching since 2008 and at Fermilab since 2012, first as a postdoc and currently as a scientist and group leader in the field of applied physics and superconductor technologies. (PO / Red)
