Winners of the Virgo Award 2024 announced
Young researchers Mattia Boldrini (researcher at the Roma section of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics – INFN) and Enzo Tapia San Martín (researcher at the Dutch National Institute for Subatomic Physics – Nikhef) are the winners of the fourth edition of the Virgo Award. This award is given every year to selected young scientists of the Virgo collaboration, for their significant contribution to the experiment, and it was created with the aim to highlight the contributions to Virgo science of early career researchers, who represent around 30% of the over 900 members of the collaboration.
“Early career scientists are the backbone of scientific research. They bring fresh ideas, innovative methods, and diverse perspectives to the scientific community” says Virgo Spokesperson and INFN researcher Gianluca Gemme, “They also made a crucial contribution to the long and complex commissioning of the detector that allowed us to resume scientific observations earlier this year. I congratulate the winners of the Virgo Award 2024, who, with many other early career scientists, contributed in a significant way exactly to this crucial phase of our exciting and challenging scientific enterprise.”
The award ceremony took place this morning at the European Gravitational Observatory in Cascina, Italy, during the Virgo Week, a quarterly meeting of the entire international collaboration held this week.
“I am very proud of this accomplishment”, says Mattia Boldrini, “but I think the award is shared with the rest of my team. It is very easy to be a good player in a good team”
“I am incredibly grateful of the award that I received today”, said Enzo Tapia San Martín, “but I am more grateful for having worked alongside many talented and dedicated people here. The award today goes to one person but the effort is of the whole team”
The jury that selected the winners is made up of leading scientists in the field of gravitational wave physics: Fulvio Ricci (chair), Monica Colpi, Gaby Gonzalez, Albert Lazzarini, Nicolas Leroy, Dorota Rosinska, Alicia Sintes, Matteo Tacca
The Virgo Collaboration currently consists of 938 members from 165 Institutions in 20 different (mainly European) countries. The European Gravitational Observatory (EGO) hosts the Virgo detector near Pisa in Italy, and is funded by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France, the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) in Italy, and the National Institute of Subatomic Physics (Nikhef) in the Netherlands. Further information is available on the Virgo website at http://www.virgo-gw.eu.
Awardees Bios:
Mattia Boldrini is a postdoctoral researcher currently affiliated with the INFN – Roma 1 group and a member of the Virgo Interferometer Sensing & Control team. He holds a Master’s degree in Theoretical Physics and a Ph.D. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, obtained respectively from the Physics and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering departments at Università La Sapienza di Roma. Since his Master’s studies, he has been involved in the Interferometer Sensing & Control efforts within the Virgo collaboration, contributing to the commissioning of the Advanced Virgo+ phase I through commissioning shifts and on-call duties. He is also engaged in simulation efforts on the control side to characterize future versions of the interferometer.
Enzo Tapia San Martín is a postdoctoral researcher at Nikhef within the Virgo collaboration, currently based in Amsterdam. With a background in electronics engineering and physics, he has worked extensively on gravitational wave detector commissioning for both KAGRA and Virgo, regarding simulation, instrumentation and operation. He carried out his PhD at Nikhef and was associated with the Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA) for obtaining his degree. Now at Nikhef he focuses on modeling the Virgo experiment to understand the causes of the limitations in sensitivity and improve the modeling of these factors. Currently, he is investigating a persistent noise issue affecting the detector’s sensitivity and is engaged in Virgo’s future upgrade plans. He is also involved in mentoring students.