RANDO RICCARDO

I graduated in Physics (2001/03/27) at the University of Padova with a record of 110/110 cum laude, with a thesis about the radiation hardness of silicon detectors for the CMS tracker (“Prestazioni di rivelatori su silicio ossigenato”).
I obtained a PhD in Physics at the Padova University (2005/02/14) with a thesis titled “The GLAST mission: assessing radiation hardness and performances of GLAST LAT tracker electronics” taking care of the space qualification of the VLSI electronics of the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT), the primary instrument on board of the Fermi space telescope (at the time called GLAST). I designed the test protocols, the test software and performed the measurements at the INFN Laboratories in Legnaro, Italy and at the accelerator facility at the Texas A&M University, USA. Next I took part to the assembly of the LAT tracker at the INFN laboratories in Pisa, Italy, and after the completion of the instrument I participated to the data analysis of the test beam campaign at CERN. From September 2009 to March 2011 I coordinated the Calibration and Analysis Science group, one of the 8 science groups that manage the scientific activities of the LAT collaboration. The instrument response functions (IRFs) for the “Pass7” event analysis were developed by me in Padova, together with the official estimates of the instrument performance (sensitivity plots and maps, etc.) one finds in so many presentations and papers. Since then I am active in the characterization and optimization of the detector efficiency and resolution, and in the monitoring of the performance of the LAT subsystems.
Since 2013 I am a member of the Large Scale Telescope (LST) project within the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) collaboration (CTA-LST), a project to build two modern large-scale Cherenkov observatories in the northern and southern hemispheres. I was coordinator of the LST SiPM R&D project until 2020. Until 2020 I was member of the CTA LST Executive Board; between January and February 2019 I was Commissioning Leader, leading the team activities on site for the first LST.
I am member of the Astrogam and AMEGO collaborations, proposing next-generation space-based Compton observatories. I am active in the determination of the radiation environment in orbit and in the evaluation of the instrument performance, and especially in the evaluation of the internal background due to material activation. I am proposing a small scale demonstrator Compton nano-satellite, and the assessment of the performance is being carried out entirely as a series of thesis projects for the Bachelor and Master students I tutor. The College of Engineering, University of Florida, based a course on my instrument design (EAS4700 Aerospace Design 1, fall 2018), inviting me to participate to the teaching activities, introducing the project to the students and evaluating the students’ final reports.
I am member of the international network “GRB Nanosatellites”, promoting the data sharing and inter-operation of proposed GRB nano-satellite instruments instruments, as coordinator for the hardware solutions.