Foto del docente

Francesca Bellini

Associate Professor

Department of Physics and Astronomy "Augusto Righi"

Academic discipline: PHYS-01/A Experimental Physics of Fundamental Interactions and Applications

Curriculum vitae

 Education

  • [2013] PhD in Physics, University of Bologna. Supervisor: L. Cifarelli.
  • [2009] MSc in Physics, University of Bologna. Final mark: 110/110 cum Laude.
  • [2006] BSc in Physics, University of Bologna. Final mark: 110/110 cum Laude.

Scientific and academic career

  • [Since 01/2024] Member of the Committee of the PhD Programme in Physics at the University of Bologna
  • [Since 03/2021] Associate Professor at Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna (Italy) - Academic discipline: FIS/04 Nuclear and Subnuclear Physics.
  • [07/2017 – 06/2020] Senior Research Fellow at CERN, and Marie Sklowdowska-Curie Fellow, within the EU-funded COFUND project.
  • [04/2013 – 03/2017] Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Bologna (Italy) and scientist at CERN, Geneva as INFN-CERN Cooperative Associate Fellow (2014- 2015).

 

Teaching

Since 2019 she is the lecturer for the “QCD in extreme conditions” course of the Ph.D course in Physics at the University of Bologna. In 2019 she holds the same course at the University of Salerno and University of Calabria. 

She participates as lecturer and moderator to several international topical schools such as the CERN-Fermilab Hadron Collider Physics Summer School (2017) and the CERN Summer Student Programme (since 2019).

 

Scientific activity

Since 2009 she participates in the ALICE experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, dedicated to the study of the phase transition from nuclear matter to the state of strongly interacting matter called Quark Gluon Plasma. By studying light flavour particles produced in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collision and high-energy haronic collisions, she has been investigating the thermodynamic properties of the system in its plasma and hadron gas phase. In Bologna, she is a member of the ALICE-TOF group, which is responsible for the Time-Of-Flight system of the ALICE experiment, where she coordinates the data analysis activities finalised to physics measurements.

At present, her research activity is focused on the study of the formation mechanisms of light nuclei and antinuclei from the experimental and phenomenological point of view. 

Since 2021 she is Principal Investigator of the CosmicAntiNuclei project, funded with an ERC Starting Grant.

Since 2022, she has been involved in the ePIC collaboration, which is focused on designing, building, and operating the first experiment at the Electron-Ion Collider (Brookhaven, NY, USA) aimed at studying the deep structure of the proton and the strong interaction between its constituent partons.

She acts as referee for several scientific journals, among which European Physical Journal A, European Physical Journal C, European Physical Journal Plus, Nuclear Physics A, Journal of Physics G, Advances in High Energy Physics.

 

Scientific publications

The complete list of publications can be found through ORCID or on INSPIRE-HEP.

She is author of more than 300 scientific publications (including as ALICE author) on major international journals. Among others are Nature Physics, Physical Review Letters, Physics Letters B and European Journal of Physics C.

 

Awards and fellowships

In 2014 and 2015, for two consecutive years, she is INFN-CERN Cooperative Associate Fellow.

In 2017 to 2020 she is winner of a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship (COFUND project) at CERN.

In 2018 she is awarded the Ettore Pancini prize of the Italian Physical Society ”For the excellent contribution to measurements of the production of light flavours and strangeness in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions and the characterisation of their hadronic phase.”

International collaborations

Since 2009 she is a member of the international ALICE Collaboration (more than 1900 members from more than 170 Institutes from 39 Counties).

Since 2022, she has been involved in the ePIC collaboration at the Electron-ion Collider (more than 500 scientists from more than 170 Institutes across the Globe).

She collaborates actively with research teams at CERN (Geneva, Switzerland) and TUM - Technische Universitaet Munchen (Munich, Germany).

 

Dissemination and Outreach

She has presented her research activities and the results of the ALICE Collaboration on numerous occasions at major national and international conferences in the field of heavy-ion and high-energy physics, including several invited talks.

She has participated in the organization of various workshops (LIGHT UP! 2018 - CERN, II INFN Workshop on Heavy Ion Physics at LHC - Turin, 2017, 4th EMMI Workshop on Antimatter, Hypermatter and Exotica Production at the LHC, Bologna 2023) and international conferences as a session convener (ICHEP 2018 - Seoul, IFAE 2017 - Trieste).

She has had the pleasure of presenting and discussing her research at invited seminars at several national and international universities and research institutes (CERN, Bologna, Rende, Mainz, Heidelberg, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Lyon), engaging with a diverse audience of students, researchers, and academics.

For several years, she has been a moderator for the International Masterclasses - Hands on Particle Physics program, organized by IPPOG - International Particle Physics Outreach Group, and an enthusiastic official guide for the ALICE experiment.

She is the founder and coordinator of the inVISIBILI project at DIFA, University of Bologna, a project dedicated to children aged 5-10 that combines scientific outreach on the topics of the Invisible Universe with research on gender stereotypes in preschool and school-age children.

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