FROM DETECTORS TO DARK MATTER: EUROPE REWARDS RESEARCH WITH PARTICLE ACCELERATORS
Interview with Lorenzo Bianchini, researcher of the INFN Pisa division, and Andrea Celentano, researcher of the INFN Genoa division, respectively winners in 2020 of an ERC Consolidator Grant and an ERC Starting Grant, for a total funding of over three million euros

ASYMOW and POKER are the names of the two INFN projects awarded in 2020 by the European Research Council (ERC) for their innovative character and for the merit of their applicants: Lorenzo Bianchini, a researcher at the INFN Pisa division, and Andrea Celentano, a researcher at the INFN Genoa division. The goal of the two projects is to develop innovative techniques for analysing data obtained from LHC accelerator collisions and to study light dark matter.
The idea on which the ERC Grants are based is to finance innovative research projects following a bottom-up approach, involving researchers of any nationality and age, who are at the start of their careers or are intending to pursue their research paths by developing unconventional methods. The ERC Consolidator Grant, in particular, is awarded to excellent researchers with at least seven and up to twelve years of post-doctorate experience. In the 2020 funding round, Lorenzo Bianchini was awarded 1,683,750 euros for the project ASYMOW power to the LHC data - an ASYmptotically MOdel-independent measurement of the W boson mass. The project’s main goal is to develop a new methodology for analysing data and calibration techniques for the CMS detector, one of the four big experiments of CERN’s LHC that, alongside ATLAS, enabled the discovery of the Higgs boson.
Devised to incentivise the initial phase of excellent researchers’ careers, and intended for researchers with 2-7 years of post-doc experience, the ERC Starting Grant 2020 awarded Andrea Celentano almost 1.5 million euros in funding for the POKER project (POsitron resonant annihilation into darK mattER). This project is dedicated to researching a particular type of dark matter: light dark matter.
We asked Lorenzo Bianchini and Andrea Celentano to explain the investment strategy for the grant that was awarded to them, as well as the aims and development prospects for their research projects.

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RESEARCH

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