CERN: ITALIAN GIOVANNI PASSALEVA HEAD OF LHCb

The Italian Giovanni Passaleva is the new coordinator (spokesperson) of the international LHCb collaboration, one of the four big experiments of the LHC, CERN’s super accelerator, in Geneva. Passaleva took office on 1 July on expiry of the term of office of Guy Wilkinson. In the past, another Italian had been head of LHCb, Pierluigi Campana, currently director of the INFN Frascati National Laboratories. And in addition to Passaleva, another Italian, Federico Antinori, is coordinating an international collaboration at CERN, that of the ALICE experiment. Giovanni Passaleva, 52 years of age, is research director at INFN. From 2008 to 2012 he was project leader of the LHCb muon detector. From 2012 to 2014 was the national head of LHCb. From 2014 to 2017 was coordinator of the LHCb upgrade. At LHCb he has participated in the measurement of the impact cross section of J/ψ meson production in proton-proton collisions and, recently, in the measurement of antiproton production in proton-helium collisions using the LHCb gas injection system, which allows the measurement of “fixed targets”. He has been the referee of various experiments, including ATLAS and CMS.