I was born in 1964 in Livorno, Italy, a town on the Mediterranean Sea. I cannot spend too long without breathing the scent of the sea.
In high school I did classical studies, including Latin and ancient Greek.
In my future, I foresaw myself as an archaeologist or a paleontologist.
Instead, I chose physics in Pisa, amazing all my friends. I wanted to learn more
about solid state physics and new materials.
In the summer of 1987 I had the opportunity to spend 3 months at Fermilab as a
summer student. This experience changed my life: When I came back
I decided to graduate in experimental particle physics. I finished my PhD in 1993,
with a thesis based on the analysis of the CDF (Collider Detector at Fermilab)
experiment data.
Since 1997 I'm a staff researcher at the Italian INFN (National
Institute for Nuclear Physics) in Pisa . During the following 4 years, I took part in the
ISL (Intermediate Silicon Layers) project, in the framework of the CDF experiment Run II upgrades. It has been the
most challenging and interesting project in my research career: We built in Pisa half of the
units that afterwards were shipped to Fermilab for final installation in the complex CDF silicon system.
I remember the long hours spent in the lab testing hundreds of microbondings,
the stress while waiting for the parts that we were supposed to assemble while the deadline was
approaching. And finally the great satisfaction of seeing the first ISL tracks on the screen of our computer.
My life of course is not only physics. In 1997 I married Enrico, a theorist.
Our daughter Silvia was born on January 6, 2001. With no doubt she is the best thing
I ever did in my life.
I still work on the CDF experiment, doing data analysis. Since Silvia was born, I reduced traveling
without her to the minimum, and I try to do my best to reconcile being a researcher with being a mother.
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