Plasma Physics Group, Department of Physics, University of Milano
People » Giancarlo Maero
To the surprise of many, including himself, Giancarlo Maero is associate professor of experimental physics of matter at the Physics Department of the University of Milano. He has been mainly hiding in the plasma physics laboratory since 2009. He focuses on experimental, modeling and simulation activities concerning stability, turbulence and manipulation of trapped electron plasmas and charged particle beams (space-charge effects and waves in plasmas, cooling, diagnostics). He has also participated in a range of INFN projects on related topics, such as particle sources, laser-plasma acceleration and fundamental physics with antimatter.
As a member of the Department's Outreach Committee, he frequently participates in public engagement activities (open days for high school students, laboratory visits, popular science seminars), making himself ridiculous - deliberately, or maybe not - in front of people for the love of science and dislike of academic pomp.
Previously he worked on high-precision experimental atomic physics with Penning traps at GSI Darmstadt, Germany (10/2004-12/2008), mainly within the development of the HITRAP (Highly Charged Ion TRAP) 'cooler' Penning trap. This included trap design, Particle-In-Cell simulation of the resistive cooling process, and trying to make his international colleagues understand that a knife has nothing to do with eating spaghetti, because if we wanted them shorter, we would make them shorter from the beginning. Although at least the latter endeavour failed miserably, the university of Heidelberg granted him a PhD in November 2008 (supervisor Prof. Heinz-Jürgen Kluge) and he is still very fond of Germany and maintains personal and scientific ties with his former colleagues.
In an increasingly distant past he obtained a Laurea (master degree) in Nuclear Engineering at Politecnico di Torino in 2004 (a smart move in a country that had rejected nuclear power for almost twenty years) with a thesis on an application of non-extensive statistical mechanics (supervised by Prof. Piero Quarati), and a clear idea he would never be a real engineer. As an undergraduate he was also briefly at CERN (summer 2003) where he performed FLUKA simulations for ADS (Accelerator Driven System) reactors, under the supervision of Dr. Yacine Kadi.
A more comprehensive CV can be found here.
Contact information:
o> Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Milano
o> Via Celoria 16, I-20133 Milano, Italy
o> Phone: + 39 02 50317303 (office)
o> + 39 02 50317461 (lab)
o> E-mail: giancarlo.maero AT unimi.it