PREST MICHELA

>> GENERAL INFORMATION

-[29/03/1993] Degree in Physics at the University of Trieste (110/110 cum laude) - "Lambda-Lepton correlations in DELPHI: a new method to measure the oscillations of B_0 mesons" (italian)
-[21/07/1997] PhD in Physics (Trieste) - "SYRMEP: at the frontiers of digital mammography" (italian)
-[03/06/1997 - 02/06/1999] INFN post-doctoral fellowship for experimental physicists
-[1/11/1999 - 30/12/2002] Research fellowship and temporary appointment as INFN researcher (article 36/23 (D.P.R. 70/75-171/91)) for the AGILE project
-[31/12/2002 - 30/09/2014] researcher at the Università degli Studi dell'Insubria, Department of Science and High Technology
-[01/10/2014 - 31/08/2018] associate professor at Insubria
-[since 01/09/2018] full professor at Insubria

>> RESPONSIBILITIES at the UNIVERSITY, TEACHING ROLES and THESES TUTORSHIP
-[since 2003] responsible of several courses in the Bachelor and Master Degrees
-[since 2005] supervisor of 52 bachelor theses, 53 master theses, and 9 doctoral theses in fields ranging from medical physics to particle and detector physics. I am currently supervising two doctoral students.
-[2008 - 2012] Member of the Insubria University Administrative Council
-[11/2012 - 12/2016] Member of the Academic Senate
-[02/2013 - 11/2018] Delegate of the Dean for the outreach and career guidance
-[01/2017 - 31/08/2018] Member of the Insubria University Administrative Council
-[11/2017 - 2022] Coordinator of the organizing committee of the education courses for future teacher candidates to acquire the credits to participate to the teacher national selection
-[11/2018 - 10/2024] Delegate of the Dean for communication, outreach and fundraising
-[02/2019 - 09/2023] Responsible of the Bachelor and Master Degree courses in Physics
-[since 22/09/2023] Director of the Science and High Technology Department
-[since 10/2023] Member of the Academic Senate

>> PROJECTS RESPONSIBILITY and GROUP COORDINATION

-[since 1992] CERN scientific collaborator (with an attestation de function; percentage of time at CERN: 20%)
-[2000 - 2007] Project leader of the silicon-tungsten tracker of the AGILE satellite
-[2000 - 2007] Responsible of the calibration photon tagged beams of the prototypes and the flight model of the AGILE satellite at CERN and at the BeamTest Facility of the INFN LNF laboratories
-[2000 - 2007] AGILE Instrument Scientist and member of the ASB (AGILE Science Board)
-[2005]: responsible of the local unit of the PRIN05 project: "Real time dosimetry of photons and neutrons for radiotherapy and BNCT (Boron Neutron Capture Therapy) with clinical LINACs"
-[2001 - 2008] Local responsible for AGILE at the Trieste and then Milano and Milano Bicocca INFN Sections
-[2008 - 2009] Local reponsible in INFN-MiB for the NTA-HCCC project on collimation with bent silicon crystals
-[2009] INFN national responsible and deputy spokesperson for the UA9 experiment on crystal collimation on the SPS circular beam
-[2010 - 2012] Local responsible for the FIBER-SPAD project (led by CNR-IMM Bologna) financed by the Italian Space Agency in the framework of the technological projects for the development of the industrial competitiveness in the Italian Spatial Field (ASI call DC-PRZ-2007-001)
-[2011 - 2013] Local responsible in INFN-MiB for the TWICE project for the development of SiPM readout systems for calorimeters for high energy and space applications
-[since 2010] Local responsible in INFN-MiB for projects dedicated to the physics of crystals (COHERENT, ICERAD, CHANEL, AXIAL, ELIOT, STORM, OREO)
-[since 2016] member of the ENUBET project (Enhanced NeUtrino BEams from kaon Tagging - project ID 681647, ERC-CoG-2015)
-[since 2019] member of the DUNE project

>> RESEARCH ACTIVITIES

My scientific activity has focused on several items:
- design, construction and test of silicon detectors and their frontend and readout electronics
- design, construction and test of detection systems based on silicon detectors and scintillators, for high energy physics, medical physics and space physics
- development of software and data acquisition systems
- data analysis
The following are some of the projects I have been/am involved in:
> Particle/ Astroparticle Physics - Detector Development

- DELPHI: during my thesis I've worked on the measurement of the oscillation parameter of the B_d(0) and B_s(0) mesons, developing a method based on the identification in opposite jets of Lambda0-lepton pairs with high p and p_T deriving from the decay of a b and a b-bar quark. The year after the degree, I have been responsible of the installation and commissioning of the silicon detectors in the DELPHI small angle luminosity monitor (the Small angle TIle Calorimeter, STIC), an electromagnetic calorimeter made of scintillator and lead, readout by WaveLength Shifter fibers.

- BABAR: I have been responsible of the design, production and test of the fanout circuits for the vertex detector, that is the flexible circuits connecting the silicon strips to the ASICs channels. More than 500 fanouts were produced for the whole tracker before 1998.

- AGILE (Astrorivelatore Gamma a Immagini LEggero): AGILE is a light (around 100kg) satellite for the observation of gamma rays in the 30MeV-50GeV range, with a field of view of around 1/4 of the sky. The instrument consists of a silicon-tungsten tracker, a CsI(Tl) mini-calorimeter, a coded mask silicon detector for X rays in the 15-40keV range and a plastic scintillator anticoincidence system. I have been the project leader of the tracker and of all the calibration facilities, both for the prototypes and the final satellite. Moreover, I have defined the guidelines for the trigger and data acquisition of the whole satellite. AGILE was launched on the 23rd of April 2007 from India and took data till the 14th of February 2024.
The 2012 Rossi Prize has been awarded by the American Astronomical Society to the astrophysicist Marco Tavani and the AGILE team for the discovery of gamma-ray flares from the Crab Nebula.

- ASACUSA (Atomic Spectroscopy And Collisions Using Slow Antiprotons): since 2005, I have collaborated with the INFN Pavia group for the development of a scintillating tracker for the measurement of the annihilation cross section of low energy antiprotons and the reconstruction of the annihilation position of antiprotons inside a dedicated trap developed for the study of anti-hydrogen. For both the detectors (a fiber tracker and a scintillating bar tracker) I have led the group responsible of the frontend and readout electronics.

- H8RD22/UA9/COHERENT/CHANEL/ICERAD/AXIAL/ELIOT/STORM/OREO: since 2006 I have been working in the field of crystal physics, from the use of coherent effects in crystals for the channeling of high energy particles for collimation purposes to the study of the radiation emission in channeling and volume reflection. The group led by me is responsible of all the tracking and calorimetric systems used on several beamlines (CERN, MAMI), of the DAQ and the online analysis.
These systems allowed to study the effects of the radiation emitted in Multiple Volume Refletion in One Crystal, the investigation of coherent interactions of negatively charged lepton beams in crystals, of the axial and quasi-axial coherent interactions between charged particle beams and crystals, of the increase of bremsstrahlung emitted by ultrarelativistic electrons and positrons in oriented crystals. Many of the results were obtained for the first time ever. In STORM, we have investigated the enhancement in photon emission by ultrarelativistic electrons interacting with the high-Z metallic crystals and the X0 reduction in strong crystalline fields that could be exploited to reduce the volume in forward electromagnetic calorimeters. In the OREO project, we built and characterized a compact calorimeter made of oriented PWO crystals, demonstrating the feasibility of assembling compact calorimeters, with significant improvements in particle identification, for both accelerator and satellite applications. Thanks to this activity, we have become part of the DRD Calo collaboration at CERN.
In the field of oriented crystals, the research group is also involved in projects dedicated to the development of intense positron sources, which led to the PRIN 2022 project "Intense positron source Based On Oriented crySTals - e+BOOST." Positron sources are key elements for future electron/positron colliders. Conventional sources are based on a large atomic number target, which, when struck by a high-energy electron beam, produces photons that are then converted into electron/positron pairs. Such sources present challenges related to the increase in temperature and the density of deposited energy, which place limits on the intensity of the resulting beam. Oriented crystals allow to exploit the intense channeling radiation produced by electrons crossing the crystals, which is then converted in electron/positron pairs, overcoming the limitations of conventional sources.
- FACTOR/TWICE dedicated to the development of a readout system, for calorimetry in high energy physics and space applications, based on Silicon PhotoMultipliers. I led the group that has developed the frontend and the readout electronics and organized all the tests on the CERN extracted beams. Our experience allowed us to become part of the ENUBET project that intends to measure directly the neutrino flux improving of an order of magnitude the systematic uncertainties on neutrino cross sections. ENUBET will measure the positron flux in the K+→e+ π0 νe (Ke3) decay in a short decay tunnel (50 m for 8 GeV secondary particles), where Ke3 represents the only source of νe. The Como group is participating in the development of a positron tagger based on longitudinal sampling calorimeters read by Silicon PhotoMultipliers capable of sustaining a rate of 500 kHz/cm2. My group is also responsible for the extracted particle beam tracking system on the CERN T9 beamline, used for testing both the prototypes and the final demonstrator, and for interfacing the tracker data acquisition system with that of the so-called Demonstrator, a large prototype of the final calorimeter.

> Medical Physics
- SYRMEP/FRONTRAD: these projects were devoted to the development of a system for digital mammography based on a monochromatic and laminar synchrotron beam, and on a silicon strip detector used in an edge-on configuration to obtain an array of pixels deep enough to stop the X-rays, and coupled to a single photon counting electronics. In SYRMEP, I was responsible of the silicon detector, its VLSI electronics, the DAQ and Slow Controls and the commissioning on the synchrotron beam. In FRONTRAD, I was responsible of the design of the new frontend ASIC of the experiment and of the new silicon detector, in order to obtain a mammographic image in less than 10 sec.

- I have collaborated with the Medical Physics unit of the S.Anna Hospital in Como for the development of real time dosimeters for electrons, photons and neutrons, from radiotherapic linacs, based on scintillating fibers readout by multianode photomultipliers. My group was part of the PhoNeS project for the development of a radiotherapy linac neutron source to offer the possibility of using BNCT (Boron Neutron Capture Therapy) in a hospital environment. Neutrons are produced via the Giant Dipole Resonance by a beam of high energy photons (>8 MeV). PhoNeS simulated, built, and tested a first prototype converter and moderator to increase the fraction of slow neutrons (with an energy <10 keV) while reducing the gamma dose to the patient. BNCT exploits the thermal neutron capture reaction by Boron-10, producing an alpha particle and a lithium nucleus that essentially remain where they were produced (i.e., in the cell that absorbed the Boron-10). Currently, it is only practiced (and in rare cases) at nuclear reactors due to the fluxes and energies involved, but it could prove to be a winning strategy for certain types of tumors, such as extensive tumors, those located near vital organs, and those that are radioresistant.
My group measured the characteristics of the neutron field with the activation method, using both single Al samples and NaI detectors, and a CsI array, a prototype of the PIXIT detector. Using the neutron beam thus produced and a non-depleted silicon microstrip detector (based on the AGILE detector) operated in real time, kinetic curves were generated with blood and urine (for the first time not in a reactor) to measure boron uptake by the body as a function of time after the administration in patients treated with BNCT. In collaboration with the S. Luigi Hospital in Orbassano (Turin), INFN Trieste and Turin, and several other universities, similar curves were measured for blood perfused (along with a boron carrier solution) into an explanted lung lobe and kept alive for a few hours.



ORCID: 0000-0003-3161-4454, Researcher ID: V-1736-2017
Nr of publications: more than 430
H-index: 49
Nr of citations: 11292