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Biography
Federico Sanchez is an experimental physicist specializing in neutrino physics and detector technology. He graduated from the Univ. of Sevilla and got my Ph.D. at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona working on the ALEPH experiment at CERN (Switzerland). After, he moved to the Deutsches Elektronen Synchroton (DESY) in Hamburg (Germany) developing the trigger system for the HERA-B experiment. Later he moved to the Max Planck Institute fur Kernphysik in Heidelberg where he acted as co-physics coordinator of the HERA-B experiment. In 2002,
He joined the K2K experiment in Japan as leader of the neutrino research group at IFAE(Barcelona). Since then he has devoted his research to neutrino physics. He joined the T2K experiment in Japan from almost the very beginning. In T2K, he contributed to the experiment construction and main results. In 2016, He was awarded the Breakthrough prize on fundamental physics, together with the K2K and T2K collaborations for the discovery of neutrino oscillations. Between 2007 and 2011, he was a member of the Nemo and SuperNemo collaborations and contributed to the preliminary ideas of the NEXT experiment searching for double beta decay without neutrinos.
In August 2018, he accepted the full professor post at the Université of Genève where he directs the group dedicated to neutrino physics at the T2K and Hyper-Kamiokande experiments. He has been involved in the development of the theory of neutrino-nucleus cross-sections with the goal to reduce the systematics of the neutrino oscillation experiments. His contributions vary from phenomenology developments to event generators, but also data analysis and model comparison. He is a foundational member of the Neutrino Scattering Theory Experiment Collaboration (NusTEC) executive committee. In parallel, he has been also interested in the development of detectors, both based on gas detectors such as Time Projection Chambers and scintillator-based trackers readout with MPPC’s with the aim at low and moderate energy neutrino experiments.
In April 2018, Federico Sanchez was elected International Co-spokesperson of the T2K collaboration.
Since August 2020, Federico Sanchez is the head of the Particle Physics department (DPNC).
Neutrino Oscillations & Cross-Sections
The DPNC neutrino group is involved in two aspects of neutrino physics. The group is contributing to the neutrino oscillation experiment T2K in Japan. The contributions of the DPNC group to the T2K experiment focus on several aspects of the near detector:
- Analysis of the near detector data to reduce the systematic errors associated with the uncertainties in the cross-section of neutrinos with nuclei.
- Development of neutrino interaction models and the inclusion of event generators used for extracting physics measurements from the experiment.
- The development of new Bayesian statistical methods based on Deep Learning to improve complex data fits with many free parameters as needed by a multiparameter fit of oscillation physics.
- Development of new event generation methods based on Deep Learning to improve the speed of event generation and precision in neutrino-nucleus interaction models.
Detector research and development
The group has been involved in different detector development concepts related to neutrino and low energy physics :
- Construction and operation of the ND280 detector. The group has responsibilities in the operation of the large TPC detectors and the magnet.
- Construction and operation of the Wagasci-BabyMind detector. The group developed the BabyMind detector in collaboration with CERN. The detector was shipped to Japan in 2018 and it is being commissioned.
- Development of the new generation of neutrino detectors based on highly granulated quasi-3D fine-grained scintillator target tracker.
- Development of new concepts of optical TPC's.
- Development of the ND concept for the HyperKamiokande experiment in Japan.
Outreach
Neutrino Physics - The T2K experiment from UNIGE Physique on Vimeo.